Out of bed at 6am, a little bit of brekki for Alexander to avoid motion sickness and we were out the gate to be picked up by our bus. The bus took us to the beach where we boarded a small amphibious vessel - a big rubber ducky with hydraulically driven wheels that lift up when in the water (see photo). I'd love to have something like this for my tinny, but at a price tag of $100k I wan't be able to sneak that one past Ilse.We were taken out to a big (60 foot) boat customized for fishing charters. After a 1.5hr trip we were 42km of shore and the skipper was trying to find some fish for us. On our first drop of the line we hooked a big (over 1mt) Cobia, but once we had it on the surface it took of and snapped the line - what a shame, no one else caught another one of them all day.
We had a good morning fishing in about 45mt of water and hooked all sorts of interesting fish, some of which were too small, yet others were not good for eating such the Black Spotted Travelly in the photograph. I shared a line with Alexander but he found it very hard to reel in some of those big fish which took a lot of effort and physical strength.
I discovered that a fishing charter is really good for lazy people like me. When we had a fish on the line the crew would come along, take it of the hook for us and mark it as ours. While we continued fishing straight away the crew gutted the fish and put it on ice for us. If we had a tangle, and tangles do happen when 12 people fish in the same spot, the crew untangles it. If part of the rig goes missing the crew just hand you another rod while they fix the broken or lost rig. All we had to do was fish, the crew did all the hard work.
Once the sharks move in on a fishing spot the fishing was over as they took our fish of the line and also quite often bit of our big 20oz sinkers. One 3mt shark came all the way to the surface so we could get a good look at it before the line was cut.
Lunch was cooked for us on the onboard BBQ and we had some of the freshly caught Sweet Lip and Javelin (Grunter Bream) there and then - fish eaten within 2 hours of being caught certainly tastes nice.
While we were having lunch we also trolled a few Lures in the hope of picking up Spanish Mackrel - we were lucky and went through a school which netted three of these magnificent fish. They were all 1mt long and they are very hard work to get back onboard but well worth the trouble.
A bit more bait fishing after lunch and soon we were on our way back into shore where the bus took us back to our caravan park. Between our friend Ron, Alexander and myself we had two Javelin, one Blue Line Emperor and one Spanish Mackrel.
Now we had to fillet the fish at the fish cleaning station in the caravan park - my least favourite part of fishing.
With all the fish filleted we split the loot in half with Ron and ended up with enough fish for six dinners in the freezer plus some Mackrel for tonight.
This was without a question the best day's fishing I've ever had and probably the most exciting day ever in Alexanders life.
na mahlzeit!
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