We Forgot What? – By Josh Behrendorff
From the moment my children could stand on their own two feet my wife and I tried to spend time fishing with our children, be it in the boat targeting bream, barra or mackerel or pumping yabbies on the foreshore to target bream, whiting or flathead. As they have aged, we slowly started paring back the amount of support we offer them while out fishing so they could learn to tie their own rigs, choose their own lures and bait their own hooks. While I probably still do a little too much for my children when they are on the water with me, my main goal is that they enjoy themselves so that hopefully my son and daughter will want to continue to join me on the water. In educational terms, we call this gradual release of responsibility, ensuring the participant has the skills and the goals are achievable.
The first fish of the trip, a healthy BBQ sized barra exploded out of the water as soon as it was hooked.
Recently I have started leaving the job of packing the boat to my son. He has been sitting on the sidelines watching and assisting me do this for four years, so I decided to leave it to him to pre rig the rods, load food, drinks and the esky into boat and drop a block of ice in ready for our on-water adventure. His first solo attempt was awesome, everything was spot on, rods were loaded, ice was in the esky and we even had food and drinks in the boat, the second trip he omitted one important thing.
We were on a short time frame with a road trip to Brisbane looming so we decided we wanted to duck out and get a couple of fresh barra fillets to share with our family down south. Ethan packed the boat and I didn’t second guess his ability so I hooked the boat off and headed down to the ramp. As I started idling the boat away from the ramp, I looked around the deck of the boat which looked bigger than usual. It was then that I realised I had told him not to worry about the esky, we will do this in the morning before we leave. ARRGH, the realisation quickly set in that the whole purpose of this trip was to take a couple of fish home, and we had no way to keep them cool. My initial thoughts reminded me of a trip I had up to Cape York where we would watch the indigenous locals leave their fish high and dry on the jetty for up to 2 hours before taking it home however, I’m not sure that my extended family would be too impressed if I happened to give them some fresh NQ fish with a side of food poisoning.
We found it tough to get the first bite, but the consecutive fish came easier.
The second option was to head for home (an hour round trip) to grab the esky and ice. We also came up with an option of throwing a bag of ice in the live bait tank, however it would be a tight fit to store a legal barra in the considerably small live bait tank.
Then it dawned on me, the car is packed ready for a road trip, which means we have our nice Waeco in the back and turned on. We quickly turned the boat around to collect the car fridge to secure it into the boat. Not exactly certain that the ladies in my life would approve, Ethan and I made an agreement that we need to keep the fridge as clean as possible knowing very well that we will be storing a weeks’ worth of food in the fridge within 12hrs.
Heading to our desired fishing location I did have a chuckle thinking, what if all of this kerfuffle is in vain and we can’t even find a fish… only time will tell. Arriving to the mouth of the river we spent a bit of time sounding the area looking for barramundi on the side scanner in a couple of our usual areas. Disappointingly there were very few fish holding, and we continued to sound around the river for almost an hour before we decided we would head back to the few spread out fish we found earlier and target them by trolling.
Spending the time to look for larger fish paid off, Ethan landed this fish on a slowly rolled soft plastic.
Trolling is a favourite technique of mine, particularly for fish that are spread out and not holding on any defined structure. We set out a couple of lures that swum to the depth of the water we were fishing. Over the next hour we continued to change up the size and colour of the lures attempting to entice a bite. Barramundi can be such a frustrating fish to target at times and today we were experiencing their stubbornness. The active track on my Garmin sounder had just about created a solid colour through this stretch of the river when at last one of the rods bounced in the rod holder followed by a splash at the back of the boat, then nothing. The line was loose. I couldn’t believe it. We worked for close to two hours for a bite and tried almost every colour and size of lure imaginable for us to lose the first bite we got. Ethan grabbed the rod and began to wind in the loose line only to see the line come racing past the driver’s side of the boat towards the bow. By some miracle we were still hooked up and this was soon confirmed as the fish went airborne again trying to throw the hooks. Eager to boat at least one fish for the trip I raced around the boat to clear the second line and pull out the landing net from under the casting deck. By this point Ethan had the fish lying exhausted and belly up beside the boat and with gentle hands I leaned over the gunwales and carefully supported the fish into the boat. We could see this was a legal fish so we quickly unhooked the fish and got the lures back into the water and circled back for another troll. No sooner had Ethan picked up the fish for a photo and an accurate measure, the same lure was inhaled and a barra was going nuts across the back of the boat. I’m sure it was on a mission to tangle up with the second line in the water. The energy these mid 60cm school sized fish have is incredible and the fish wasn’t about to tire out like the last fish. I took the strike and did my best to keep its head down into the water with very little success. It was merely a fluke that the rear treble held long enough for us to scoop the fish up in the landing net. As Ethan laid the fish on deck of the boat the lure fell out.
The better quality fish came late in the day on 3” soft plastics from the smallest bite.
Barra fishing really is a sport full of high’s and lows, 2 hours of nothing followed by 5min of pandemonium and it wasn’t over yet, we hooked up twice more on this school before the bite shut down. We decided to keep the first two barra, bleeding them into the Waeco and promptly released the last two fish, yet we still had a couple of hours to burn so Ethan and I made a move to look for some better sized fish.
My young man was keen to get a fish on the cast and I was keen to sit back and relax for a bit, but first I had to find him a likely spot. After another hour with my eyes glued to the sounder, I came across a small rock ledge that had 5 fish holding tight, we manoeuvred the boat up current and used the electric motor to hold us in casting distance of the fish.
Ethan tied himself on a 1/2oz jig head and threaded on a soft plastic and peppered the area. The poor kid would have thrown easily 40-50 casts across the area and I was almost feeling sorry for him. I considered idling around the area to see if the fish were still holding, however he beat me to the punch alerting me to his solid hook-up with a simple and quiet “Dad I’m on.” Not thinking much of it I brushed him of it with a simple “ok,” thinking he has just got a trevally or something only to turn my eyes and see this bucket mouth slowly break the surface viscously shaking her head. Un-prepared for the fish I stumbled around the boat diving for the landing net that I had already packed away while his chromed slab continued to give him grief with short hard runs followed by spectacular jumps boat side. The relief on Ethan’s face as the fish swum into the landing net was priceless. He worked very hard for this fish and deserved every bit of it. The only thing that made me prouder was watching him swim the fish and release it back to terrorise more bait fish. Ethan had done the hard work to wake the fish up and I was sure to cash in on the bite managing to land a couple more fish soon after.
Persistence pays off, with some good barra landed after hours of searching.
Fishing and parenting are both very similar in this way, it’s not always easy, you need a lot of patience and persistence, but it usually pays off in the long run. And as for the fish in the Waeco, by the time we got home to clean the fish, the blood and slime had begun to freeze on the base of the fridge, the smell wasn’t great, but more disappointingly, it didn’t chill the fish down as quickly and cold as a good old salty ice slurry. The fridge cover now also sports some fish stains that are a reminder of this challenging, but rewarding day. Until next time, stay safe and God bless.
