I don’t fish the bay often and was reminded why on Saturday night. I had grand designs of going over to mud to fish the shallows for snapper. I threaded a piece of rope up the links of my anchor chain to deaden the clanking, I concocted a berley of pilchards, bran, bread, tuna oil and several kilos of blended prawn shells, I caught fresh squid to have prime baits and saved the whiting frames from recent adventures to add some variety. I put in at the mouth of the river and puttered across the bay in the afternoon to set myself up for the change of light and the tide change in the evening. I slowed down to idle and snuck into my chosen spot in about 7m of water, my mate slipped the deadened anchor over with barely a whisper and I slipped the second anchor over to steady the boat without making a noise. We started to trickle out a slow procession of this gorgeous concoction of berley as the sun was going down. A couple of other boats came across and anchored nearby but displayed the same sense of caution when arriving.
Then the sun went down and it started. I’m not sure whether these blokes could smell the sausages we were cooking for dinner and decided they felt like joining us for a BBQ or whether they were just inconsiderate and stupid. The first one came over on the plane from behind us and I thought he hadn’t seen the all round white light as he was heading straight for us. So I shone the torch at him as he got within 50m. So he swore at me to tell me to turn it off. He then did a lap around the boat, drove over where our baits were sitting and parked at 45 deg from the bow 30m away. He clanked his anchor chain through the roller, revved in reverse to back off and then started clunking around the boat. Bloody hell. They sat there for about 20 minutes, and then decided that they’d go somewhere else. Clanked the chain back through the roller, and then roared off at full tilt.
The second one came roaring across from the port 10 minutes later, did a figure eight over the baits then passed 20m from the bow to anchor behind us.
I gave up at this point as anything that may have been sneaking up my berley trail had been driven over 5 times by now and no doubt had buggered off to quieter waters. So I pulled the anchor and came back across to see if I could pick something up in the port. I anchored quietly on our chosen spot and started feeding floating baits back out. Only to have some clown do the same thing again. Motored up over our lines within 20m, drove up past the front of the boat and dropped his anchor. I had well and truly had enough by now. Started pulling the anchor only to find that by the time I’d pulled it in, I was less than 5m from the side of his boat.
Don’t people understand personal space anymore? Don’t people understand that shallow water snapper are a skittish fish that needs quiet to fish for them successfully? I was furious when I came back in.
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I feel for ya
.
Steve.
