Posts
I put the call out for additional readers prose on the subject and one of our readers and AKFF member Ado supplied another very interesting tale on what it's like to rediscover your fishing roots and suffer at the hands of some kind of progressive fishing monster .
When I was young I was a fisherman. I grew up on Cockatoo Island, a dockyard in the middle of Sydney Harbour. What choices did I have but to be a delinquent or a fisherman. While I became both in my ample spare time, I could only hold my head proud to the latter title. I must have been a fisherman. All the adults said so.
I knew how to catch a clutch of Leatherjackets. They were in ample supply in summer, dropping handlines from the south-west corner of Parramatta Wharf, using long shank number 10 hooks and the tiniest morsel of perfectly presented pealed prawn. Handlines (preferably the old-world cork variety) were best due the extreme subtlety of the leatherjackets sucky bight. I could catch them by the freezer full, and made significant pocket money selling them to all the adults that weren’t fishermen like me.
If I got bored of catching Leatherjackets, then I could spear them. I used a light-weight, handmade spear with welding rods as prongs and aerial aluminium as the body. Adding a 5m length of insulated electrical wire with a slip knot around the right wrist and I was set – straight outa ‘Lord of The Flies’. Mid tide was best. Too low and the wash from all the suburban non-fisherman that plagued the harbour on the necessarily sunny days would stir up mud and spoil the vis. Too high and the Leatherjackets would be foraging too deep on their pylons. I could tell a Leatherjacket from the weed they mimicked, the parallax error and deflection of the spear as it pierced the water surface. I was the hunter. Let others gather.
The place to catch Bream was the southern slipways. A runout tide would hold an unweighted live prawn over the structure. Multiple plastic reels could be set, the artificial lights just sufficient to see a sudden loss of slack in one or more set lines. Luderick were available on a run in tide, drifting string weed past the barrier pylons south of Parramatta Wharf. Flathead could be found feeding below the chomping Tailor under the lights of the Camber Wharf, laying in wait for strips of Tailor caught specifically for the purpose on a trusty wonder wobbler. Winter held the promise of marauding Trevally, available only on the run-out tide at the eastern end of Parramatta Wharf. The best moment was just after the hour when the wash from the last of the ferries would stir up action from the slumbering depths. I was a fisherman alright. My many ponies were well trained indeed.
By the time I’d reached university my interests shifted elsewhere. I was slowly coerced into adventure sports and the adrenaline they distilled. Caving, canyoning, skiing, white water kayaking and (above all) rockclimbing consumed my weekends with bight sized adventure snacks. While I occasionally went ‘adventure fishing’ in wilderness trout streams or from isolated rock platforms, I was no longer a fisherman but an adventure junkie, swapping line for ropes and hunting nothing but life points.
It wasn’t until my mid thirties that I rediscovered fishing. I can remember the moment of clarity. I was fishing off an isolated rock platform on Broughton Island. Just getting there was a logistical challenge of charters, packing and portage. It was an adventure, even without the fishing. My dusty thirteen foot beach rod and rusty Diawa reel were withdrawn from a premature retirement and thrust into use. Hanging off them was 15lb monofilament, a gang of 4/0 hooks, a pilchard and a bobby cork – my rock-fishing pony at play. What I thought was a holiday from my usual holidays was soon shattered. My pony and I were in battle with a 3kg Spangled Emperor that had more than one trick up its sleave. After running back and forth around the rocky shores, reel screaming, line singing and rod bowing, the being with a brainstem and more than one trick won.
This was not remarkable in itself. I could live with being unworthy. But doubling up in pain afterwards? That was unexpected. I was crippled by an adrenaline rush more akin to a near death experience than a holiday at the beach. It was a revelation. Fishing was no different to any of my other loves. It was an adrenaline sport after all. But it was an adrenaline sport without the dangers that I’d mistakenly believed were a necessary accompaniment. I was hooked (so to speak), reliving my childhood in a man’s world of rocks and cleats and white-water sheets and eventually … kayaks.
So what has any of this got to do with ponies and their lack of tricks?
I did a whole lot of unlearning. I was all at sea at sea. Boats were for beer swilling barbie masters. Soft plastics were things that ate away tackle boxes. Bibbed lures were for trout, and only when Celtas failed. Braid was something that my daughter did to her hair. Trolling was what the three Billy Goats Gruff did on their way to pastures green. I had a myriad of well trained ponies, but each had only one trick. How could I catch a bream without a live prawn, a slipway or a run-out tide? My ponies were as useful as old dogs.
I realised I wasn’t a fisherman at all. In fact I was a long long way from being a fisherman. None of my techniques could be deployed while bobbing around on a kayak. I had to start over. At least I had kayaking to keep me entertained while I did so. Being within 5m of a bombora had me puckering enough without fish, at least for a while. But a while is never long enough. Soon bouncing around on ocean swells was commonplace. Adrenaline and ‘commonplace’ are not companions.
But success, at least the taste of success, was not long coming. I began to relive my childhood days, replacing Leatherjackets with Redfin. My trick was a red and black Micro-Min, trolled adjacent to weed beds. In the salt I found a Gulp sand worm drifted across the mud in 3m of water could stir up a Flathead in the lakes or myriad of Snapper mimicking Wrasse in the ocean. These few techniques became my new poison. They inspired and inhibited in equal doses. I knew there was more to kayak fishing that three lures and two techniques, but I could not bring myself to persevere with them. Am I just replacing one set of ponies with another? Have I learned nothing in the intervening 30 years?
The answer is obvious. To me the lure of fishing is not in the achievement. Achievement means nothing but a warm inner glow. I never achieved anything in climbing. All I ever did was experience. The experience of fishing is all about expectation. It’s the expectation, the tension, the suspense that feeds my fishing addiction. Fishing without expectation is … well … relaxation. Where’s the fun in that? I don’t want to relax, I want to live. I want to live with adrenaline in my veins and a heart thumping in my chest. There is more expectation in a nibble from a Wrasse than an hour spent tossing a 5 inch jerk shad at someone else’s Snapper. A new trout stream remains barren until I see my first rise. Luderick are abundant only after I see your first down. A new technique, no matter how well researched, recommended and reconstructed is simply not fishing unless and until it catches me a fish.
Expectation is everything to me. Expectation is the experience. But experience is also a pre-requisite to expectation.
My first Snapper will be Catch 23.
