charleville
17-07-2008, 05:33 AM
It is said that a sign of growing old is when people telephone you at 9pm and ask, “Did I wake you?” ;D
I am in a different category of growing old insofar as I am a night person, have always been a night person, and as an early retiree, my delight is being able to stay up all night and not have breakfast until 10am – 11am. I simply cannot get enough of the Tour de France these nights.
However, my much older brother, who has just retired, is in the ‘ “Did I wake you?” at 9pm’ category. :-/
Some readers might remember that I wrote in these pages a couple of years ago about a night fishing trip to Mud Island that I took him on, during which he displayed all that is annoying in taking some senior citizens ( or children) fishin’.
On that night, he caught the biggest fish of his life, a 56 cm snapper, but when he arrived at the ramp to come out with me, he brought a light rod set up with a whiting hook and tackle to match. When I showed him the 30 lb line that I was using with 6/0 hooks, he was perplexed.
So, as often happens when one takes guests fishing, that night became one of those where I simply acted as tour guide and found myself providing him with gear that would do the job, baiting his hooks, tying his knots and giving him lots of advice on how to fish. Even then, he was in great risk of losing that snapper because when I told him to keep it in the water with a bit of pressure on it whilst I manoeuvered the landing net, he lifts the fish out of the water and has it swinging around in figures of eight and dangling in the air outside the boat for what seemed like an eternity. ::)
So he got the fish and had his photo taken with it and was extremely happy and offered all of $5 as his contribution to fuel and bait - an offer which I chose to refuse in the nicest possible way. On the other hand, I was exhausted just trying to help him all night and I felt short-changed on my fishing experience on the night .
Needless to say, despite hearing innumerable versions of, “Anytime that you are going fishing, don’t forget me” since then, I have not invited him back on the boat in the past two years.
However, he has just retired two weeks ago and I thought that I might “do the nice thing” to start off his retirement and invite him for a little fishing trip once again. After all, maybe I was being a bit harsh with my memories of the last trip and – well – er – ah - he could not be that bad, could he? I must have been imagining it. Yes – that’s it – I must be getting old and impatient myself and I really ought to be more relaxed and tolerant. :-/
Now, as it turns out, I cannot go out into the sun much myself at the moment as I am getting some treatment for a few sun spots on my face with a very aggressive cream so I thought that I might invite him to a few hours of night bream fishing at the ‘Pin. At least, I know that the angling gear that he owns will do that job and I would not need to supply him with rod and reel and as he likes fishing, I know that he occasionally takes himself off to sit on a bank and drown a prawn or worm and occasionally – very occasionally - he might take home a whiting, he also knows how to tie a knot for that class of fishing and he should be no trouble on the night.
Alas, how wrong I was! :-[
Oh, how wrong I was!
Gosh, I was wrong!
We set out for Kalinga Bank late on Sunday afternoon hopefully to catch the top of the tide that was forecast to be at 6.30 pm. Of course, that is the official “Brisbane Bar” time.
I have learnt from Nugget and others that to catch fish, stealth is a potent ingredient in the angling mix. So, generally, when I fish, I am very quiet.
I always have an anchor light illuminated but when I stop to fish, I light up a special portable one set above my boat’s canopy which can be seen from other boats but is shielded from the immediate water around me by the canopy. I minimise the light that falls on the water.
I avoid, like the plague, any dropping of sinkers or metal things against the hull. All sound is kept to the barest minimum.
Alas, my brother is not so conscious of the need for stealth.
All night – and I do mean ‘all bloody night’ – he dropped things in the boat, hit his sinker against the side of the boat just about every time that he reeled in his line and flashed that bloody great Eveready Dolphin torch around everywhere.
Of course, this was interspersed with lot of loud opinions on everything under the sun – er – well, moon anyway.
At least, he brought his own gear.
Well sort of. :(
He brought two rods but the line on each had deteriorated to the stage of being unusable, it seems. All night he struggled with tying his knots, breaking line after line after line and his ratio of line-time-in-the-water to line–time-being-worked-on-in-the-boat was well less than 1:1.
Finally, he decided that his line class was too light for the conditions so I lent him my spare Alvey set-up. At which time, he discovered that the line on my spare rod was thinner than what he had on his own rods.
As for me, I just sat there in (mostly!) silence >:( and, patiently and quietly, fished.
Now, this is a bloke who has always loved fishing but seems to have no sense about it.
We were there a bit before six pm and at that place the tide turns a little earlier than at the Brisbane bar for which the tide times are quoted. So some time well before 6.30pm, the boat swung around through 180º and we settled in the opposite direction to that which we had been facing. However, the significance of this seems to have evaded my brother’s consciousness because at 6.30pm, he glanced at his watch and said, “It is 6.30pm. It will be high tide now.” “Well no,” says I , “when the boat swung around 20 minutes or so ago, that was high tide.” “Oh,” he says.
He would not take experienced, credible advice either. “Come over to this side of the boat,” I said, “and cast as close to the mangroves and fallen trees as you can. That is where the fish will be in this strong current flow.”
“Nah!” he replied. “If they are out here, they are out here. It does not matter where I cast my line” as he threw out his lightly weighted line into the never-never in something like eight metres of fast running water. ;D
Come 8 pm, he had had enough and just pulled his line out of the water and sat there. Almost no bites and just a whole series of line mishaps. :-/
Our plan had been to stay until 8.30 pm but I had secretly hoped to stay there later if the night was good – and essentially it was. Awesome conditions actually! A zephyr of a breeze. The temperature was warm, the sky was overcast but there was plenty of light from a largish moon, and the seas were mirror flat. :)
But alas, at 8.30pm, my brother was well and truly ready to go home.
So back to the ramp we went, motoring along in some of the most beautiful night conditions I have ever been in – a mirror surface which gave a ghostly feel to the reflections of trees in the water in the narrower channels – warmish dry weather, the hypnotic spell of the flashing beacons, the occasional whiff of wood fires – absolute paradise!
Back at the ramp we loaded the boat with little fuss and whilst I had a chat with another fisho who arrived soon after us and who was full of enthusiasm to know where we had fished and what secrets lay at Mud Island after I mentioned that was one of my favorite haunts, my brother sits himself in the car impatiently awaiting my return to go home.
He was not going to be in bed by 9.30pm and he was evidently not happy about that!
The score for the night was nil bream to my brother but six to me. When we arrived at my house an hour later, I gave him my six bream and sent him on his way home.
Sunday night was so beautiful on the water, I just had to return on Monday night – but this time on my own! ;)
So back I went on Monday night and fished the runout tide from the peak high of around 7pm to the low in the same spot at Kalinga Bank. In fact, I pulled up stumps a little early at 12.30am because a fog rolled in and I felt the need to skedadle out of there before I got stuck there all night.
In that respect I was a bit lucky, I did get caught in pea soup but slowed right down and hugged the coastline until I stumbled across the faint red beacon that I was looking for and soon after, came to the edge of the fog and motored back to Jacobs Well in clear, flat, warm conditions.
Next morning, I read that it had been one of the warmest July nights for several years. It truly was an awesomely wonderful night to be out on the water. Truly lovely! :)
My take home catch was eighteen bream on Monday night – nothing special in the size – all under 30cm – but a good feed anyway. I have not done much fishing lately and this was a nice gentle return for me, even though it was bream and not the snapper that I mostly like to chase on winter nights in the Bay.
http://img.skitch.com/20080716-xwufc1sfgnpaafetjyrkiyqadt.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/charleville2/tbgx/skitched-492-1)
Click for full size (http://skitch.com/charleville2/tbgx/skitched-492-1) - Uploaded with plasq (http://plasq.com)'s Skitch (http://skitch.com)
The damage was done with mullet gut (no onion) made more user friendly by dipping it in bran. I used 1/0 hooks with light lead during the tide runout and nil lead at the top and bottom of the tidal flow.
Oh – er – on the previous night, my brother insisted on using his own frozen, service station bought, prawn bait because he “wanted to be able to eat his hamburger without getting food poisoning from the mullet gut”, notwithstanding that I had liquid Solvol at the ready and which I find to be excellent for cleaning hands when on the boat.
The action was steady all night throughout the runout tide. Throwbacks included a few undersized bream and one undersized flattie.
Ah well, it will probably be another three or ten years before my brother’s next fishing trip with me!
;D ;D ;D
.
I am in a different category of growing old insofar as I am a night person, have always been a night person, and as an early retiree, my delight is being able to stay up all night and not have breakfast until 10am – 11am. I simply cannot get enough of the Tour de France these nights.
However, my much older brother, who has just retired, is in the ‘ “Did I wake you?” at 9pm’ category. :-/
Some readers might remember that I wrote in these pages a couple of years ago about a night fishing trip to Mud Island that I took him on, during which he displayed all that is annoying in taking some senior citizens ( or children) fishin’.
On that night, he caught the biggest fish of his life, a 56 cm snapper, but when he arrived at the ramp to come out with me, he brought a light rod set up with a whiting hook and tackle to match. When I showed him the 30 lb line that I was using with 6/0 hooks, he was perplexed.
So, as often happens when one takes guests fishing, that night became one of those where I simply acted as tour guide and found myself providing him with gear that would do the job, baiting his hooks, tying his knots and giving him lots of advice on how to fish. Even then, he was in great risk of losing that snapper because when I told him to keep it in the water with a bit of pressure on it whilst I manoeuvered the landing net, he lifts the fish out of the water and has it swinging around in figures of eight and dangling in the air outside the boat for what seemed like an eternity. ::)
So he got the fish and had his photo taken with it and was extremely happy and offered all of $5 as his contribution to fuel and bait - an offer which I chose to refuse in the nicest possible way. On the other hand, I was exhausted just trying to help him all night and I felt short-changed on my fishing experience on the night .
Needless to say, despite hearing innumerable versions of, “Anytime that you are going fishing, don’t forget me” since then, I have not invited him back on the boat in the past two years.
However, he has just retired two weeks ago and I thought that I might “do the nice thing” to start off his retirement and invite him for a little fishing trip once again. After all, maybe I was being a bit harsh with my memories of the last trip and – well – er – ah - he could not be that bad, could he? I must have been imagining it. Yes – that’s it – I must be getting old and impatient myself and I really ought to be more relaxed and tolerant. :-/
Now, as it turns out, I cannot go out into the sun much myself at the moment as I am getting some treatment for a few sun spots on my face with a very aggressive cream so I thought that I might invite him to a few hours of night bream fishing at the ‘Pin. At least, I know that the angling gear that he owns will do that job and I would not need to supply him with rod and reel and as he likes fishing, I know that he occasionally takes himself off to sit on a bank and drown a prawn or worm and occasionally – very occasionally - he might take home a whiting, he also knows how to tie a knot for that class of fishing and he should be no trouble on the night.
Alas, how wrong I was! :-[
Oh, how wrong I was!
Gosh, I was wrong!
We set out for Kalinga Bank late on Sunday afternoon hopefully to catch the top of the tide that was forecast to be at 6.30 pm. Of course, that is the official “Brisbane Bar” time.
I have learnt from Nugget and others that to catch fish, stealth is a potent ingredient in the angling mix. So, generally, when I fish, I am very quiet.
I always have an anchor light illuminated but when I stop to fish, I light up a special portable one set above my boat’s canopy which can be seen from other boats but is shielded from the immediate water around me by the canopy. I minimise the light that falls on the water.
I avoid, like the plague, any dropping of sinkers or metal things against the hull. All sound is kept to the barest minimum.
Alas, my brother is not so conscious of the need for stealth.
All night – and I do mean ‘all bloody night’ – he dropped things in the boat, hit his sinker against the side of the boat just about every time that he reeled in his line and flashed that bloody great Eveready Dolphin torch around everywhere.
Of course, this was interspersed with lot of loud opinions on everything under the sun – er – well, moon anyway.
At least, he brought his own gear.
Well sort of. :(
He brought two rods but the line on each had deteriorated to the stage of being unusable, it seems. All night he struggled with tying his knots, breaking line after line after line and his ratio of line-time-in-the-water to line–time-being-worked-on-in-the-boat was well less than 1:1.
Finally, he decided that his line class was too light for the conditions so I lent him my spare Alvey set-up. At which time, he discovered that the line on my spare rod was thinner than what he had on his own rods.
As for me, I just sat there in (mostly!) silence >:( and, patiently and quietly, fished.
Now, this is a bloke who has always loved fishing but seems to have no sense about it.
We were there a bit before six pm and at that place the tide turns a little earlier than at the Brisbane bar for which the tide times are quoted. So some time well before 6.30pm, the boat swung around through 180º and we settled in the opposite direction to that which we had been facing. However, the significance of this seems to have evaded my brother’s consciousness because at 6.30pm, he glanced at his watch and said, “It is 6.30pm. It will be high tide now.” “Well no,” says I , “when the boat swung around 20 minutes or so ago, that was high tide.” “Oh,” he says.
He would not take experienced, credible advice either. “Come over to this side of the boat,” I said, “and cast as close to the mangroves and fallen trees as you can. That is where the fish will be in this strong current flow.”
“Nah!” he replied. “If they are out here, they are out here. It does not matter where I cast my line” as he threw out his lightly weighted line into the never-never in something like eight metres of fast running water. ;D
Come 8 pm, he had had enough and just pulled his line out of the water and sat there. Almost no bites and just a whole series of line mishaps. :-/
Our plan had been to stay until 8.30 pm but I had secretly hoped to stay there later if the night was good – and essentially it was. Awesome conditions actually! A zephyr of a breeze. The temperature was warm, the sky was overcast but there was plenty of light from a largish moon, and the seas were mirror flat. :)
But alas, at 8.30pm, my brother was well and truly ready to go home.
So back to the ramp we went, motoring along in some of the most beautiful night conditions I have ever been in – a mirror surface which gave a ghostly feel to the reflections of trees in the water in the narrower channels – warmish dry weather, the hypnotic spell of the flashing beacons, the occasional whiff of wood fires – absolute paradise!
Back at the ramp we loaded the boat with little fuss and whilst I had a chat with another fisho who arrived soon after us and who was full of enthusiasm to know where we had fished and what secrets lay at Mud Island after I mentioned that was one of my favorite haunts, my brother sits himself in the car impatiently awaiting my return to go home.
He was not going to be in bed by 9.30pm and he was evidently not happy about that!
The score for the night was nil bream to my brother but six to me. When we arrived at my house an hour later, I gave him my six bream and sent him on his way home.
Sunday night was so beautiful on the water, I just had to return on Monday night – but this time on my own! ;)
So back I went on Monday night and fished the runout tide from the peak high of around 7pm to the low in the same spot at Kalinga Bank. In fact, I pulled up stumps a little early at 12.30am because a fog rolled in and I felt the need to skedadle out of there before I got stuck there all night.
In that respect I was a bit lucky, I did get caught in pea soup but slowed right down and hugged the coastline until I stumbled across the faint red beacon that I was looking for and soon after, came to the edge of the fog and motored back to Jacobs Well in clear, flat, warm conditions.
Next morning, I read that it had been one of the warmest July nights for several years. It truly was an awesomely wonderful night to be out on the water. Truly lovely! :)
My take home catch was eighteen bream on Monday night – nothing special in the size – all under 30cm – but a good feed anyway. I have not done much fishing lately and this was a nice gentle return for me, even though it was bream and not the snapper that I mostly like to chase on winter nights in the Bay.
http://img.skitch.com/20080716-xwufc1sfgnpaafetjyrkiyqadt.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/charleville2/tbgx/skitched-492-1)
Click for full size (http://skitch.com/charleville2/tbgx/skitched-492-1) - Uploaded with plasq (http://plasq.com)'s Skitch (http://skitch.com)
The damage was done with mullet gut (no onion) made more user friendly by dipping it in bran. I used 1/0 hooks with light lead during the tide runout and nil lead at the top and bottom of the tidal flow.
Oh – er – on the previous night, my brother insisted on using his own frozen, service station bought, prawn bait because he “wanted to be able to eat his hamburger without getting food poisoning from the mullet gut”, notwithstanding that I had liquid Solvol at the ready and which I find to be excellent for cleaning hands when on the boat.
The action was steady all night throughout the runout tide. Throwbacks included a few undersized bream and one undersized flattie.
Ah well, it will probably be another three or ten years before my brother’s next fishing trip with me!
;D ;D ;D
.