Fish Tales - Chapter 1 - Why I like to Fish

So why the piscatorial passtime? 

For some its golf, and I have to admit I have had my forays chasing the dimpled white ball, ruining a perfectly good walk, which turns the name more to “FLOG” rather than the game steeped in the traditions of places like St Andrews or the Lakes, and at one stage had a handicap of 18, although I always suggested my handicap was actually picking up clubs.

For me its the fight with the fish that brings the greatest satisfaction

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Its the serenity of the locations, be they the openness of the ocean on a tranquil day or the turgid explosion of water crashing onto rocks and rock pools. 

Its this coupled with the inbuilt need potentially provide, which the local community does if I have had a good day. Its the time to reflect, and be at peace as well as spend time with friends, that brings me back, again and again.

Although I would like to add a marlin or some other “trophy fish” from the bucket list, and there are times of course when fortune looks to favour the brave, its the fish I am good at catching, the flathead, the snapper, the pearl perch and the like that bring me back to the sea in my ship, where the call of the greater blue yonder cannot be ignored. Fly fishing does not enamour me, yet I know for some it is what rocks their boat. Big game fishing has its allure but only until you see the cost.

Chasing trout in mountain streams where the water temperature is just above ice level is not for me. I am a clear sky flier, the closest to the cold and wet of my younger rock fishing days would be the odd summer sun shower. I am old enough that the creature comforts mean something.

My boat is not overly “flash”. Its a 4.8 metre runabout with a 60hp donk. Gets me to where I want to go, can launch off the beach if I am game (but there are lots of stories of that going wrong, especially of you talk to my mates or my sister who managed a less than graceful full somersault into the beach breakers one late afternoon) and takes three comfortably but does better with two.

For ten years I ran an annual boys fishing weekend/competition in remembrance of a mate taken too early by cancer. Some of the stories from those weekends are stuff of legend. Like the time my mate Dodger won the trophy for “species unknown”, when potentially a shark or a big kingfish (we were on Edith Breakers at the time a place notorious for line breaking species) took his line and walked him around the boat, around the other three fishing at the time and in full view of an adjacent competition boat, never once getting a wind against it. When he finally did, the fish realised it was actually hooked and that was the end of that. Like I said, stuff legends are made of.

There were years of that competition where you could count the number of fish caught on one hand, other where it seemed everyone bagged out, like the time the dolphin fish were running and some were heard to say if that was what it was like every day it would be called catching, not fishing. 

But days like that are few and far between. Having said that, we seem to go and catch something. My wife suggests the hours we put in would suggest our hourly rate is not very good, but like I said we manage to catch a feed most times out – most times.

There are always rods in the van or the Cruiser when we travel but they get only a little work. Knowing the area is always the key and as we expand our knowledge of the waters around my home we find more and more places where the quarry congregates and with the push of a button the spot is marked.

A bit like Elmer Fudd seeking “wabbits”, or those seeking the Daffy Duck – Purple Pumpernickel (Disney), seeking them here and seeking them there, its a constant battle where the satisfaction is not in the outcome but the quest itself.

That quest, much like the need of Willow Ufgood to bring Elora Danan to fight the evil Bavmorda (Willow – 1988 MGM/United International Pictures), the driving force to defeat the adversary and win the day, or at least feed the thronging masses with the panache of immured mercenary swordsman, Mardmartigan drives us to fish and fish again.

I just love to fish.