Today Gaz and I have booked an off shore fishing charter. So it was an early start to proceedings as we had to be at the wharf at 6.00 am. Everything supplied so sounded like a good choice for us. We were chauffeured to our boat by Shaz who sacrificed a sleep in for us.
We meet our other participants at the wharf which meant we had 6 on the boat plus 2 crew. We met the skipper on the wharf who turned out to be the boat owner but he didn’t come with us – chatted us up then nicked off leaving us with Gilligan (sorry deck hand Chad and the “Captain”) and we set sail (well not actually sail more the throb of a diesel engine) off into the wild blue yonder. The sun was just rising and the view as we moved out of the harbour was great. Past the coast guard station at Tomaree point and out in to the open sea. It was a reasonable successful day. I of course got nothing, zilch, zero but every one else managed a fish or two. Gaz managed a gummy shark about 1.3 mtrs which gave him some curry. We were at a depth of about 200 ft so that’s a lot of fishing line to reel in. He however had another handicap – seasickness. While yours truly was fairing exceptionally well Gaz had been violently seasick from the second marker. If you can imagine this the boat rotating between about 45 deg in the 3 mtr swell leaning over the side reeling in a foul hooked fish weighing 3 to 4 kg with gear that was just about stuffed all the while being seasick with Gilligan and the skipper providing useless advise on the probable species of an, as yet, unseen fish. He did get the fish in and managed to survive the rest of the trip albeit a bit weaker. The fish was enjoyed as an evening meal and Gaz plucked up markedly as we came through the channel into closed waters. It was however an effort worth of mention.