2013 was bad, 2014 not much better, but I think 2015 was the worst year for Perth surfers ever??
Apart from the much hyped "Swell of the Century" which only lasted 2 days, and in my opinion was of a size that was commonplace 20 - 30 years ago, this year totally sucked.
This 2015 season I've only had I think 5 surfs. I live near the beach at Golden Bay, but usually surf South of Mandurah at mainly Hunchies, and occasionally Melros Boat Ramp, Blue Bay, and Gearies. I only bother checking those spots when the swell buoys
show a swell of over about 2.5 metres, as otherwise those spots don't even break. 2 of my surfs this year were at Blue Bay, which sometimes these years doesn't even break - so the swells we had were decent, but there was just so few of them.
This winter we had basically Summer like conditions, with no rain and strong easterlies, and hardly any cold front storm systems. Because of the lack of storms and onshores the beach break banks are the worst I've ever seen. Secret Harbour and Golden Bay didn't even have a channel this year until about a week ago when the souwesterlies kicked in.
I've lived here 16 years and never seen this phenomenon, and speaking to a local licensed fisherman who drives up and down the beach every day for the last 30 years - he's never seen it either.
The surf is so ****ing poor and rare these days that a lot of people have just given up.
My last surf at Hunchies I was out there by myself, and my previous surf at Blue Bay about 2 months earlier I shared with only one other person. Recent years shark attacks aren't helping either.
I still check out my local break (Secret Harbour) any time I think there's a chance to get wet, but nothing there has much excited me in years. About 200 guys fighting over mainly closeouts. I haven't seen any decent shape there in years.
Speaking to other "old timers" shows I'm not alone in my thoughts. Lots of my compatriots have given up, and I don't blame them. I'm just lucky that my job is afternoon / evening, leaving mornings free if there is any surf. It's just too bad there usually isn't !!
I'm teaching my sons who are 7 and 9 to surf, but it's hard to get anywhere when you can't get a few days in a row to consolidate what you learn !!
So anyway, that's my whinge !!
If you're my vintage (I'm 54), no doubt you know what I'm talking about.
If you're a young guy then you're probably blissfully ignorant that the waist high sloppy shorebreak you shared with 100 people recently was "the best surf you've had in your life" !!

I couldn't agree with you more. I live in Golden Bay and have been for the past 26 years (when there was good and reliable banks) and its been probably the worse year for consistent surf in many a year, even down Mandurah way. And you can keep Secret Harbour as a surf spot that hasn't worked really well for years. Very poor and at times frustrating

All good in my hood

Oh, one more thing.
People are always telling me that "down south is still good" !!
Well, maybe compared to Perth and Peel yeah, but it's nothing like it used to be.
I've been looking at the wave swell buoys on a daily basis for down South and Perth since the internet started, and when Perth was a metre, down South would be 2 or 3 metres. Now quite often the swell is the same size. Sure, a metre down south means head high waves as compared to 6" high in Perth - but even down south doesn't get as much swell as it used to.
Blame El-Nino, or climate change, and to a lesser extent Councils mismanagement of coastal dunes (Trapping sand in the dunes with fences and vegetation does not do the sandbanks any favours) - but unfortunately our surf has gone to crap, and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it !!

Fine by me, surfed most weekends.

You are absolutely spot on. At least you can die knowing that you had it when it was good. Time to hang up the boots old boy so some of us young blokes can get the waves of our lives

The onshores didn't prevail on wa west coast this year I agree, though there were still plenty of awesome days up and down the west coast from what I witnessed. Between the capes had an all time winter for the reefs (with moderate swells, offshores and somewhat reduced crowds) while most of the beachies didn't quite get dug out enough to crank for more than the odd day here or there. In Bunno where I reside the more sand that is removed the better the banks/shape is on the back beaches so fun days where few and far between. Havin said that on the high tides the small wedgy spots were doin their thing and the 'swell of the decade' brought a certain rivermouth to life for two days of 200 metre long lefts and rights, so definitely not complaining!

My mates were saying the same thing....


15 years ago.

From a metro perspective I would agree 100%. My last decent surf was August 24th - a Monday (that's how I can remember). Other than that it has been very ordinary and this weekend promises to be the same... I don't think I have surfed for the last 4 weeks... have started lap swimming again just to keep the shoulders moving.

A good reason to Windsurf I reckon.

Personally I've not had many good surfs, but as I've said before, I wanna go with Zuke. He always seems to get something, either that or he keeps posting the same pics!........

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GPA said..
From a metro perspective I would agree 100%. My last decent surf was August 24th - a Monday (that's how I can remember). Other than that it has been very ordinary and this weekend promises to be the same... I don't think I have surfed for the last 4 weeks... have started lap swimming again just to keep the shoulders moving.

Yeah, it's depressing when you look at the forecast for the week ahead, and it's around 1 metre for the whole period. I know I sound like an old geezer with alzheimers, but 30 years ago my mates and I were surfing EVERY weekend even in Summer. If we missed out a weekend it was a rare occurance, and sure, some of those Summer days were small, but still enough to propel you on a wave. In Summer now it's almost dead flat, and not surfable at all for weeks and months at a time. Like you I stay in paddling shape by taking my kids to Aqua Jetty in winter, and swimming at the beach in Summer. I'm seriously considering taking up windsurfing, but the problem is I work arvos / evenings which is when the seabreeze kicks in !
It does amaze me the guys on here that reckon it's been OK?? I just don't see it. All I can assume is that they are young guys who just don't know what it was like in the period before the 1990's which is when things started getting bad.
As an example when I was at high school in the late 70's I had a friend who used to belong to Leighton Surf Club, and in Winter he used to surf Cables almost every day after school. How often does Cables break these days? Even with the artificial reef which has made it shallower.
I wonder how many days we'll get rideable surf this Summer?

SUP is the way!

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mikthe2004 said..

GPA said..
From a metro perspective I would agree 100%. My last decent surf was August 24th - a Monday (that's how I can remember). Other than that it has been very ordinary and this weekend promises to be the same... I don't think I have surfed for the last 4 weeks... have started lap swimming again just to keep the shoulders moving.

Yeah, it's depressing when you look at the forecast for the week ahead, and it's around 1 metre for the whole period. I know I sound like an old geezer with alzheimers, but 30 years ago my mates and I were surfing EVERY weekend even in Summer. If we missed out a weekend it was a rare occurance, and sure, some of those Summer days were small, but still enough to propel you on a wave. In Summer now it's almost dead flat, and not surfable at all for weeks and months at a time. Like you I stay in paddling shape by taking my kids to Aqua Jetty in winter, and swimming at the beach in Summer. I'm seriously considering taking up windsurfing, but the problem is I work arvos / evenings which is when the seabreeze kicks in !
It does amaze me the guys on here that reckon it's been OK?? I just don't see it. All I can assume is that they are young guys who just don't know what it was like in the period before the 1990's which is when things started getting bad.
As an example when I was at high school in the late 70's I had a friend who used to belong to Leighton Surf Club, and in Winter he used to surf Cables almost every day after school. How often does Cables break these days? Even with the artificial reef which has made it shallower.
I wonder how many days we'll get rideable surf this Summer?

Get in the car and drive. Its not hard, we are all time poor.

Time to evolve surfers!
Time to learn kite surfing.

I think you will find it was sh1te then as well. Not to many photos around of smoking Triggs :)

When you are younger you are keener to go out and surprisingly it was fun. Even when it looked like crap.

There has not been good banks since Cyclone Alby went past. That was a good swell.

yeah surfing in the late 70's 80's and 90's and having a beach shack at madora bay, I grew up surfing surf beach (secret harbour) avalon, melros halls head etc.

I can unequivocally say that i caught way more waves then on my favorite 6.2 rusty thruster than i could ever hope to catch now. The fact that i am now over 30 kg heavier than those days may however be the contributing factor to that. Unfortunately the old rusty is now more of a submersible under my heft than a surf board.

As for swell patterns, i recall heaps of horrible grovel sessions 20 to 30 years ago. Its just that as a youngster i would go out in anything. Now days i just couldn't be arsed unless its pretty decent. Hence the extra 30 kg. The swell around the Perth metro has always been marginal till you got south of dunsborough. i would concur that the past few summers have been lean pickings but this is why i ride a sup. I honestly don't think its any worse than it was 10, 20 or even 30 years ago during the winter, but i will concede that as the summers get hotter, there may be an argument that there is less summer swell. Thankfully we still live in a pretty amazing, safe and sparsely populated city so not too much to complain about really.

SW WA is one of the best spots in the world for swell consistency. As Doggie says - get in a car and go for a drive. Its really that easy.

All parties are right, Perth used to have waves, it rarely does now. Man made intervention of the natural movement of sand put paid to our local waves, it's that simple.
It's rare that I go a week without waves though, but I'll also go to bed early, get up at 1am drive four hours, surf for four hours and get out of the water at 9 am as the southerly starts to waft in and drive four hours home.
Keeps me sane. Kinda.

Usually I won't even check the surf when I arrive at a beach break. Just suit up an get out there. Even if it's average usually snag a couple of fun bits and pieces and keeps me fit for the sessions that are pumping. Seems these days for some there are kinda too many reasons not to get wet. Swellbuoy stats, heated car seats and shark factor etc.

Hell as a goofy footer in summer at 5 pm if the seabreeze has been howling all arvo I'll even ride the waist high wind waves in boardies for twenty minutes. Good way to unwind after a day at work.

^^^
Smicko - I really admire your determination. Unfortunately I am someone who has trouble sleeping - so never really bounce out of bed and therefore struggle with the dawny - that and the lack of time as I leave for work by 7:15am. On the occasions where it looks to be promising I have been up at 5:00am for the before work mid-week surf only to be let down by poor conditions and/or a staggering crowd. I drive North occasionally, but the wind and banks have been woeful lately and I hate doing a U-turn and blowing half a tank of juice and 3hrs.

I am sure a big part of it is me getting pickier as I get older... that, and having other stuff to do around the house and with the family.

This is the same story I've heard for the past 50 years.

It was always better 10 years ago,.. 20 years ago,.. thirty years ago,.. blah blah blah,.. when I was a kid,.. blah blah,..
It wasn't.
It was exactly the same.
When you were a kid you were a foot shorter so the waves were foot bigger.
When you were a kid you were scared of any wave over two foot high so they were all monsters.
When you were a kid your total experience on a board was one or two years so every wave was wildly exciting. Now, the same size wave is just boring.

As to whether years ago the waves were always better down south,.. or up north ,.. or over east,.. or west,.. or anywhere but here,.
There were days when you would drive down some blistering hot sand track to get to some secluded spot where the waves were supposedly always brilliant,. only to find they were... non existent,.. flat,.. barely a ripple.
And there were days when you would rock up to some ordinary spot expecting nothing and it was totally ripping.

Now, on the days when the swell is less than ordinary we choose to remember the few days when the waves were exceptionally good and compare them to that.
On that basis, the waves of today will always be worse than what used to be.

The comparison is not valid and the conclusion drawn by making it is false.
I don't think the average conditions have changed at all.
Some days good, most days average, some less than average.
But,..they are all good days for something, but maybe not just what you had in mind.

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pweedas said..
This is the same story I've heard for the past 50 years.

It was always better 10 years ago,.. 20 years ago,.. thirty years ago,.. blah blah blah,.. when I was a kid,.. blah blah,..
It wasn't.
It was exactly the same.
When you were a kid you were a foot shorter so the waves were foot bigger.
When you were a kid you were scared of any wave over two foot high so they were all monsters.
When you were a kid your total experience on a board was one or two years so every wave was wildly exciting. Now, the same size wave is just boring.

As to whether years ago the waves were always better down south,.. or up north ,.. or over east,.. or west,.. or anywhere but here,.
There were days when you would drive down some blistering hot sand track to get to some secluded spot where the waves were supposedly always brilliant,. only to find they were... non existent,.. flat,.. barely a ripple.
And there were days when you would rock up to some ordinary spot expecting nothing and it was totally ripping.

Now, on the days when the swell is less than ordinary we choose to remember the few days when the waves were exceptionally good and compare them to that.
On that basis, the waves of today will always be worse than what used to be.

The comparison is not valid and the conclusion drawn by making it is false.
I don't think the average conditions have changed at all.
Some days good, most days average, some less than average.
But,..they are all good days for something, but maybe not just what you had in mind.

I'm going to concede that when I started surfing I used to live in Perth, so when my mates and I drove down to Mandurah each weekend for a surf we usually went regardless of conditions or size, so sure we surfed some crap those days - but it was still surfable. These days there is just a lot more unsurfable days, and once again I'll concede that I'm fussier as well. I hardly bother with Surf Beach as the ridiculous crowds grovelling with closeouts doesn't interest me at all. Surf Beach did have better shape before the developers ****ed it up by removing all the sand dunes and trapping sand in the dunes with shadecloth fences and vegetation.
Even conceding the above points I find it hard to believe that anyone would say "it's exactly the same"??
Perth has experienced a dramatically drying climate, with this years rainfall the worst since records began.
Lack of rain is due to less cold fronts pushing through, and cold fronts is what brings the surf - so is it any surprise that this year is the worst surf year ever?
Funnily enough 2013 was a relatively wet year, but we were plagued with onshores almost the whole Winter. And even though it was onshore we didn't seem to get any groundswell with it? The few times it went offshore the swell dissappeared almost immediately.
But lets talk more recent. The last 4 weeks there has been no swell, and it's been onshore almost from the get go, with no relief in sight.
Even the windwaves have no push to them.
If I had to put a figure on it I'd say that the frequency and size of surf these days is probably only 30% of what it was in the mid 80's when I started.
That may seem an outlandish statement, but it's probably being generous !!

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^^


<div>I agree with you 100%... IMHO 2015 has been the worst year ever for metro area surfers. None of my regular or novelty breaks delivered this year. I surfed the mal more than ever, and even still I am struggling to recall a really good session.

Sunday looks like a chance, but every man and his dog will be out there hassling for anything that looks to be holding shape...

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GPA said..
^^


<div>I agree with you 100%... IMHO 2015 has been the worst year ever for metro area surfers. None of my regular or novelty breaks delivered this year. I surfed the mal more than ever, and even still I am struggling to recall a really good session.

Sunday looks like a chance, but every man and his dog will be out there hassling for anything that looks to be holding shape...

Go for a drive

But this day

^^^^
Yeah - I surfed that short run of swell about 1.5km further North. It was chaos and a long way short of what that photo is showing...

and I have no problem going for a drive - except when it's that bad you grab a pie and do the U-turn back home - done it three or four times this year

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GPA said..
^^^^
Yeah - I surfed that short run of swell about 1.5km further North. It was chaos and a long way short of what that photo is showing...

and I have no problem going for a drive - except when it's that bad you grab a pie and do the U-turn back home - done it three or four times this year

I think I did two north runs this year that wernt great (still surfed) but so many that were great, you know the place. I don't even go if the forecast looks marginal.

Also further north was better than expected on many trips.

Would I be pushing it to say that those 2 1/2 days of epicness balanced out the whole year?
No.
It was great but not stupendous.
I concur that this year has been rubbish. Metro speaking.

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Buster fin said..
Would I be pushing it to say that those 2 1/2 days of epicness balanced out the whole year?
No.
It was great but not stupendous.
I concur that this year has been rubbish. Metro speaking.

But we all know that metro is not the best, I think I've had maybe 4 - 5 local surfs that have surprised me this year.

Kiting has been epic. Even some banks south of city beach