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Published: April 15th 2008
Well it's been a week since my last update so I reckon it's time I get stuck in and write up another report.
Quite a lot has happened. In fact so much that I had to remind myself this morning that I haven't even been here two weeks yet, I thought I was going in to my third week!
Sydney is a wonderful city. I'll do a separate report thingie on the city and its many attractions but for now I'll keep it a little more personal. Last week I started looking for a car, more on that in a little bit. I also started to socialize with some people in the hostel for a change, up until then I had hardly been there at all, choosing to spend my time all around Sydney instead. Met some nice, mostly Dutch, people but in typical backpacker style they moved on to bigger (well, in all likelihood, smaller) and better places a few days later. I went down to Bondi Beach (shithole imo) and walked from there down to Coogee beach which is a great walk down the coast with wonderful views.
On Thursday I got a call from one
of the guys from the fishing forum, Haji, asking if I wanted to join him for an afternoon down in Cronulla, a southern suburb of Sydney. He took me to see some of the coastal areas there which are very different again to the parts I had seen up till then. He also took me to Captain Cook's landing place where I reclaimed Australia for the Dutch Crown and where I was once again surprised by the hospitality of the Australian people. We ran into an Australian couple from Adelaide at the monument and got to talking. After about 15 minutes they left but not before giving me their address and phone number and inviting me over for dinner when I got to Adelaide. Thanks to Haji for showing me around the area where he lives. You could do a lot worse, with the ocean on one side and the Hacking on the other side.
We drove around Botany Bay a little more and met up with another member on the forums, Jumpus, who basically runs the site. He drove me back to the hostel in the evening but not before showing me some of the really cool gear
he has. Being very well connected in the tackle industry, he usually gets his hands on all the new models of reels and equipment so his place is a tackle-junkies heaven. He also invited me to go with him and Haji for a fishing trip in the Hacking the next morning.
What a beautiful place that was. Super clear water and bordered by a national park, it is the perfect place for a boating trip. It was very quiet and a great day and even though we were there to fish, we spent a good deal of time just motoring around, exploring bits of the river where neither of them had been before and plucking oysters from the rocks and eating them (fancy doing that in Scheveningen 😊 ). I managed to catch my first fish on a soft plastic lure, a whiting.
At the end of a great day with lots of laughter ("You know what I like about you?....... Nothing!") and everyone having a go at each other, not to mention Haji eating four chooks, two loaves of bread and two emu drumsticks and leaving Jumpy and me with half an apple each, we put the
boat back on the trailer and went home. Jumpus received a call from his friend Jim asking him to go Marlin fishing the next day and he was kind enough to invite me along. Because we had to get up at 5am I stayed over at his place, sleeping peacefully surrounded by reels, lures, line, sinkers, hooks and lots and lots of rods in various states of completion.
Saturday 5am alarm went off. In the car by 5.30 and in the water around 6.30. It was my first time out to sea in a small boat (6,25 meter cruisecraft with a big outboard on the back) and even though it was a fairly calm sea, running across the swell at 33 knots was quite an experience in itself. The boat had only two seats so two of us were standing in the shelter just behind the steering hut, hanging on the rail and cushioning the jumps and bumps with our legs. After around 45 minutes of this the guys broke out the lures, set up the spread (the different lures on different rods and outriggers out the back of the boat) and we started trolling at around 8 knots,
some 20-25 miles off the coast. Then the waiting began, which I guess is the difficult bit when trolling because nothing much happens. Luckily it was a beaut of a day with very calm seas and for the most part sunny.
10.30am. The sun had just come back after being gone for maybe half an hour. I was dozing off on one of the chairs in the cabin, the previous two days' sleep deprivation catching up with me. All of a sudden someone screamed "HOOKUP!!!". In about half a second I was on my feet and out of the cabin, ready to reel in the other lines and clear the deck so they don't get tangled. Another second later, I heard "DOUBLE HOOKUP!!" and not long after "TRIPLE HOOKUP!!!". A whole bloody school of striped marlin had risen up to the surface and were attacking our lures. I was not prepared for this. They had told me that if we got a hookup, just bring in all the lines and lures as soon as possible. However with four people on the boat and one of them steering it, I would need to grab a fish as well. It all
happened so fast that by the time I realized this, it was too late. I was already reeling in the port outrigger (which, as it happened, was one of the few lines which didn't have a fish on.. *doh*) and by the time I figured out what was going on, the fish on port side had thrown the hook. Meanwhile Alex and Jumpus on the starboard side were getting crossed over and had to do a little fishing tango to switch positions. The fish on Alex' rod was taking line like crazy and this was the heavy 37kg outfit, a bigger fish in other words. Unfortunately after a few minutes it also spat out the hooks, most likely due to them being too small and not properly rigged up to the lure. Game fishing is a little more demanding on gear than catching say whiting on soft plastics.
It was still chaos as Alex and I scrambled to put all the gear away. Since this was my first ever hookup I was a little confused on what goes where and how and wanted to also keep half an eye on what was going on with the fish. Once we cleared
the deck and Jumpus got stuck in to the fight, things calmed down a little bit again until the fish was at the boat, which was remarkably quickly by the way. I got my first glimpse of a marlin up close as I saw a beautiful greenish blue color in the clear blue water by the boat. The fish tried to make a run underneath the boat but Alex managed to grab the leader and pull it up to the side of the boat where it was tagged. It seemed to be a little worse for wear and for a moment we were afraid it might kick the bucket but after swimming it next to the boat for a few moments it kicked its tail and swam off into the depths to grow a little bigger. Experienced marlin fisher Jumpus gaged it to be around 7 foot (2 meters) long and 80-90kg. Congratulations all round as this was the first marlin on Jim's boat.
Once the adrenaline wore off I was a bit cross with myself. Not only did I fail to notice the marlin on my side of the boat, but I completely missed Jumpus calling out to
me to take the rod from him and fight the fish in his stead. By the time gear was all put away it was too far into the fight to rightfully call the fish mine if I had gotten it to the boat. It's not every day you get the chance to fight a marlin on a $5000 24kg outfit and it would've been awesome to catch my first game fish out of a triple hookup, something that is pretty rare with some regular game fishers going years before getting one. What I did learn Saturday is that you need an experienced crew and maybe even more importantly an experienced and calm skipper to be successful with game fishing in general but multiple hookups in particular. At one point Jumpus almost went overboard when someone put a bit too much throttle on the engine and we nearly lost the marlin at the boat due to the motor not being in gear or moving forward. Between the spread of the lures and the location where you're trolling, as well as the rigging and type of the lures, it would take many, many years to become a proficient game fishing skipper. Hopefully
I'll get another chance to go out with the guys once I get back to Sydney.
The rest of the day was spent trolling various areas but we failed to raise another marlin although some other boats were calling in hookups towards the north of Sydney. Still, we were the only ones to get a multiple hookup and I won't soon forget the sight of the water behind the boat seething with these big fish hitting lures left and right, some of them even tail walking on the water side by side, trying to throw the lures. I'm very fortunate to have witnessed that and also to have been invited out to go game fishing on my second weekend in Oz. Some people pay upwards of $500 for a day like that so I consider $50 for my share of the fuel cost to be more than reasonable! Thanks to Jim for taking me out on his boat and to Jumpus for getting me invited!
We got back happy but completely knackered. A day out at sea takes it out of you, even if it's as smooth as it was Saturday.
On Sunday we had a meet&greet
with a lot of people from the fishing forum where I met Haji and Jumpus and it was good fun with a lot of different characters showing up and everyone having a good laugh and a few beers. It was nice to put some faces with the names and I hope I'll get a chance to meet up with those guys again.
That brings us to this week but there's not much to report. I've gotten stuck in to finding a car and am still a bit pissed off atm as I found the perfect car yesterday. The previous owner knew his cars and had looked after it well and had recently replaced a lot of important parts as well. It had all the extra bits I wanted but the price was a bit high. I figured I could get him down a couple hundred as he seemed keen to sell but just as I got back to negotiate with him, a group of bloody Sweeds showed up and paid him the asking price. So it's back to the drawing board on that one. I'm looking at a few more cars today and will hopefully find something that will
suit me as it's time to go.
Autumn is really setting in now, with the leaves falling off the trees and even though it's still 20+ degrees it does get colder at night and it's raining intermittently. Also, although Sydney is a wonderful place and I reckon I could happily live here, I would like to start my actual traveling and see some more of the country. I refuse to go to the zoo here so I've yet to see a koala or kangaroo.
I'll let you guys know how I get on with that! For now, all the best...
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Roy
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Looks like you are having one hell of a time! Anyway, keep up the nice posts and pics... a good way for me to start the day ;)