Sheik of the Creek

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BRISBANE The Sheik of the Creek

There’s a lot to be said for fishing in Queensland, and one of the beauties is not paying for it! Secondly, it’s being able to get your own bait without filling out a form so some shiny arse sitting in an office somewhere can feed his cat. But there’s a negative too. I’m talking about the trials of cast netting.

Yes it’s great when you want to get to your honey hole by a certain time or part of the tide so you go through the drama problems start when you drop the boat in and the outboard turns over but doesn’t start, or as has happened on more than one occasion, the boat is half full of water as you’ve forgotten the bungs.

Either way, you spend a precious half an hour getting sorted.

At last you’re underway, smashing into the half metre chop, trying to keep the rods in, the pots on board and your hat attached.

You question whether to drop the pots first or get bait. Because time is limited, you leave the pots in and somehow get to your favourite spot without

square metre of opening onto an oyster covered rock the size of a watermelon that you didn’t see. The wind goes back to where it was, but picks up, and you drift into a nasty mangrove branch that starts to bend your upright rods over. You can feel one or two livies in the net. Rods. Bait. Rods. Bait...You grab the mangrove branch and with the rods threatening to become shorter manage to push yourself away from the branch, tug the rods VIC MERCURY DEALERS out and throw them in the bottom of the boat, where ALBERTON you’ll later stand on and ALBERTON MARINE break your favourite one. 39 Johnson Street Alberton P: (03) 5183 2344 F: (03) 5183 2219 W: albertonmarine.com.au MELBOURNE MELBOURNE MARINE CENTRE 393-399 South Gippsland Hwy Dandenong South P: (03) 9703 2003 E: info@melbournemarine.com.au W: melbournemarine.com.au

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of unloading, parking, starting and heading off to your herring or mullet or prawn spot with baited breath.

There is that one time in 20 when you have the cast net ready, you’ve remembered to patch the metre long rip you put in it last time due to that spotted gum branch lurking just under the mud, and conditions are perfect.

Little breeze, no weed, and a clear cast zone.

The tide is just right and your first throw spreads and drops.

Before it even hits the bottom you can feel the tapping, and you pull it up, dropping a dozen mullet, and 50-odd 4” herring onto the floor. Your bucket is ready, and the transfer into the live tank is seamless.

I think in 30 years of cast netting that has happened to me once... Maybe.

More commonly, the losing anything except your temper. The wind has blown a couple of litres onto your sungoggles and wet your shirt.

You grab the cast net rope, and it comes out like twenty-year-old ball of bailing twine from behind the shed.

Somehow it comes undone, and you slither, crawl and stagger your way to the cast deck. You’ve dropped into neutral to allow a suitable time to drift into the best throwing zone after calculating wind and tide velocity, the coefficient of friction against the hull, and prep time.

But the extra ten seconds untangling the net from the bucket, the fall over the pots and the change in wind speed means you have ten seconds to load and throw. Due to a combination of luck and skill, you gather the net and cast just as the wind changes direction, meaning you get about a

ECHUCA You rip the net up, EADES XTREME MARINE tearing a hole the size of a small bath towel in it, but 24 Sturt Street Echuca manage to get the fish in P: (03) 5482 2333 the boat which turns out to F: (03) 5482 2133 be a happy moment. W: xtrememarine.net.au You grab the pliers, and grip the poisonous BRAESIDE little bugger, before throwing it, and pliers JV MARINE WORLD overboard, then panic as 878 Springvale Road Braeside you hear the Perspex on P: (03) 9798 8883 the console crack as you F: (03) 9798 7554 go back into mangroves. With your heart W: jvmarine.com.au pounding and your temper shorter than a giant short thing, you breathe. Breathe. You decide you’re not going to make your honey hole with livies. You remember the packet of soft plastics you bought from the scabrack at Aldi a few months ago that you threw into the tackle box while you wonder if you have any jigheads. Bait fishing is over rated anyway.

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