Really struggled on my last week at Iluka for this year. The weather was atrocious for most of the time with strong northerlies, a day of strong westerlies, a day of rain and storms, then fresh south-west to south easterlies to finish. As a result I only managed one day (2 sessions) when I could fish the front of the Bluff when the westerlies flattened the swell. In those 2 sessions I hooked four jew and landed one of about 60cm. The only other fish of note was a tarwhine close to 45cm taken off the wall on my first afternoon there. There were a few bream about, of reasonable quality, but you needed to fish for them in the dark – daytime (even dawn and dusk) was largely a waste of time. A few flathead sessions produced only two undersize fish and conditions were never right to try for luderick. The only other fish I saw caught was a GT of about 2.5kg which I gaffed for a bloke who’d hooked it on light gear and an SP off the front of the Bluff. He got it on his first throw,and didn’t get another touch in the next three hours!
On my last session I was out on the wall about 10.00 p.m. on Sunday night fishing for bream in the washes on the surf side about half way out. As I lifted another bream up the rocks and swung it in to my waist to secure it I heard a strange cracking sound from above. “That doesn’t sound very promising” was my immediate thought. After bagging the fish I grabbed the torch and shone it up onto the rod. My worst fears were realised – about a quarter of the rod tip was missing and was sitting against the sinker down at ground level!
A strange sadness came over me. I had built that rod around 1985 I guess and it had served me well ever since, only ever needing the odd runner replaced. Between us we had caught many hundreds, possibly thousands of fish of many different species. It fitted so comfortably in my wrist just behind the ball of the thumb that I developed a callous there from using it so often. And now it’s gone! Tomorrow I’ll remove the runners that are in good condition, recover the reel seat and the butt cap that can be re-used on other builds and probably go out and buy some expensive floozy of a modern piece of ultra-light space age carbon fibre that weighs about a quarter of the old girl and is ten times stronger.
But it won’t feel the same!!! I’m too old for floozies anyway. I want my old girl back!!!
Cheers Freeeedom
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