i thought i would post this after reading a recent post about questionable charter boat operators
Just so others can say they have been warned:
I was invited out on tomcat charters not six months ago for a work do. boss paid, so it cost me nothing except the few tinnies i brought along. or so i thought...
started to think something was amiss when i asked the deckie on the way out,
" do you know what the tide is doing today mate?"
his reply, quite sternly as if he were addressing the mentally handicapped, "there's no tides out where we are going."
well excuse me dipsh1t, but if i am not mistaken, there has been a bit of a swell running this week, and we are crossing a bar, are we not? The south passage bar, to be precise.
young dopey was either too ignorant to care about the conditions, or too ignorant to give me an intelligent reply. either way, not a good start.
so we plough through the slop, nearly through the bar when old skipper steps onto deck to point and laugh at another cat, probably another charter boat, stuck on the sandbank with white water all around. he kept going as he said the coastguard will have to help him. Sh!t. did i just hear that!!
any way, we get out to spot x, and young dipsh1t baits up MY OWN rod with a fresh spool of 80lb Fins braid that i brought along and says he is just checking to see what's there before we all drop. at this point i am thinking of throwing the little blighter overboard.
so eventually, we get to have a fish.
Dipsh1t brings out a couple of bags/boxes of nice sized pillies and squid. and then proceeds to cut it all up into baits smaller than i use for whiting.
"What the F@#& are you doing dipsh!t"
what a bunch of tightarses, i couldn't believe it!!
we did catch quite a few fish that day, but nothing over about 3lb, as anything bigger would have had to squint to see our baited hooks.
now if you thought i was already annoyed, things were about to get downright insane.
one of the guys fishing on the other side of the boat ( i kept my distance, being the only braid user amonst 10 or so mono users) was bringing up a fish that was foul hooked and doing loop de loops on the way up. he ended up tangling another chap and myself when the fish was almost to the surface.
wasn't a bad tangle at all, i get worse tangles in my carkeys most mornings, so i start untangling the lines when dipsh1t comes over, knife in hand, leans over, grabs my line, with about 100m still out cuts it, tosses it, then finishes unwrapping the other two!!
Now i am generally a calm and right minded individual, but at that moment i was completely speechless. all i could do to restrain myself was go sit in the toilet and lock the door or i surely would be facing charges of some description.
i didn't fish for the remaining hour or so of that trip, and when we got back to cleveland, the skipper and his sidekick emptied the esky of fish onto the public wharf and threw us a handfull of plastic bags before departing.
after that, all i can say is that if this post stops one more man, woman or child from being subjected to this particular bunch of condescending cowboys, the trauma i suffered will be worth it.
i still shake with rage whenever i think about that trip, and it is the sort of thing that should never happen.
very, very dissapointing indeed, and i hope someone from this charter group reads this post and realises that any eperience like i have just outlined will never result in return business. but maybe they don't care anyway.
thats my bitch for the week, now who wants to take me fishing???
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I'm sure some of the bigger operators do a great job, but I personally prefer smaller operators where you just fish with your mates rather than go shoulder to shoulder with a crowd of gumboots.
Yeah, some women actually know a thing or two about fishing. Who knew?
Originally Posted by Deiter
