Brett Thorpe, a friend of Bruce's, took us out in his boat The Ant, the day before we left Esperance. Discovering we hadn't yet caught a fish while in Australia, he vowed to correct this anomaly, promising without doubt that we would have fish on hook in no time. A bold statement said with the conviction of an Aussie who knows fishing is Australia's biggest past time, but who is ignorant of our ability to maintain highly embarrassing fishing failures.
The ride out was great, holding on tight for fear of falling out we bounced around our seats. Once we stopped the engines to fish the boat started to take a gentle roll around the sea. Unfortunately, it was this gentle rolling that brought about an irresistible urge to sleep, a sign of sea sickness, and I slept off the final half of our fishing adventure in the cabin.
Bret Thorpe takes us fishing on The Ant
With modern equipment using sonar to locate shoals of fish we anchored up near the edge of a reef and dropped our pre baited lines in. Our first catch was hooked within seconds of our lines reaching the sea floor. We caught nannigai snapper, 'blackarse' bream, skippies, queen fish, swallow tails, and the boat pitched and rolled, and drifted, and all our previous, sad, pathetic and comedy attempts to fish, were forgotten, as Thorpie attached weights to lines, to hooks and not only actually used bait, but the proper stuff too, not just crusts of bread, and we caught fish, actually caught fish.
It took us just over half an hour to get to our fishing spot and we fished for just over three hours. The boys were able to relieve themselves over the side of the small boat easily, for me there was nowhere to go.
A gull hovers around the boat waiting to steal our catch
Laury catches a big cuttlefish
On our return to land we received a lesson in how to fillet a fish. We watched in awe as an enormous, colourful, pile of tropical fish were turned into a relatively tiny pile of neatly prepared fillets. As this was our final day in Esperance we had no time to actually eat any of the fish we caught and we couldn’t take it with us for lack of refrigeration. So, we only half fulfilled one of our dreams of catching a fish and eating it. We will simply have to go fishing again. Woo hoo!
Nannigai snapper
Laury is given a lesson by Bret on how to fillet different fish varieties
Gareth buries the fish in the garden
The happy three with their catches of the day, notice Laury has the biggest smile
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1 comment:
You guys are amazing! Giving all those luxuries to teach poor kids is very noble and inspiring! And aside from that, your cause takes you to lots of places and experience lots of things that ordinary people don’t usually encounter – like fishing in foreign waters! I hope you continue to inspire a lot of people, and of course, go fishing again!
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