May has been a great month.... in fact I've decided to cheat a little and put my last week of May into a new "June" entry and also moving some stuff into an "April" entry. By spreading things out I hope to hide the fact that I've been a bit lazy with updating this little online journal of mine over the last few months. :-)
Three weekends ago I tried something I've never done before. Deep sea fishing! Oh sure, I've fished off a boat a couple of times, but deep sea fishing is a very different kettle of fish. I went with Debbie's brother Mark, who is getting married soon, and one of his mates Darren, who's a nice guy and yet ANOTHER person in Brisbane doing IT.... it's like we're taking over or something. Also on the boat was a group of tattoo traffic control guys who I had a good laugh with.... don't ever feel sorry for a "stop go" man... there is a good chance they make more than you do! A couple of the guys had their kids names tattooed on their arm, which I though was pretty cool... but I digress!
The charter was called Sea Probe Fishing Charter and although the boat looked like it could use a little maintenance the traffic guys said the people who run it knew there fishing better than most and they'd been out with them half-a-dozen times each. The boat was a 36 foot (10m) twin hull fishing vessel which picked us up at a public landing on the Gold Coast and took us TWO hours out to sea before fishing started. I have a history of sea sickness, so I wasn't sure how I'd go with deep sea fishing, but I took a sea-sickness tablet an hour before the boat left and hoped for the best. Even though it was a pretty calm day the waves were big and on the trip out I kept hoping we'd reach our destination and stop. Even when we did stop however the boat just kept rocking and I was given the advice: just start fishing to take your mind off it. We did about a dozen "drops".. and on each drop you basically wait for almost TWO-MINUTES as your line drops to the bottom (apparently the bottom was almost 100 meters down), then you wait about five minutes hoping to feel a bit. I say hoping, because the sinker is so heavy it's hard to tell if you have a fish or not during the FIVE-MINTUTES you madly try to real in before the next drop. It's very tiring on the arm. I snagged a few times (probably twice as much as anyone else - doh!) although I'd like to think a couple of time were sharks that broke my line. The hard part is just keeping your balance though: the boat throws you back and forward and it's common to bump into the guy beside you. After a while deep sea fishing the veterans started catching plenty of huge King fish, but I only caught a trevally. Then we traveled south for a while to fish above the reef, which was 60 meters deep and fortunately the boat rocked a bit less there... and I started catching more fish, including a good sized Snapper and a few colourful little things like Parrot fish, although most of mine these were just undersize. *sigh*.
For probably half of the trip I was trying to fight sea sickness, and on the way back I finally vomited, but oddly enough I felt okay after that. I felt really sorry for Mark and another guy who felt sick on the way out and never recovered. Mark said lying down actually helped, but even lying down the boat is rocking and I can imagine it felt really awful being stuck in the little cabin. I think the tablet narrowly saved me from having a really awful trip, but by forcing myself to fish I had a pretty good time I must say. Even though Darren and I didn't catch too many fish, the great thing was that the others did brilliantly, and the catch is always shared evenly. So in the end I took home two big king fish, three nice snapper, a trevally and a sweet lip. Mmm. After I scaled the fish I suddenly realized I didn't have enough space in the freezer and had the idea of cooking a big fishy feast for all my housemates. For those of you who know me well, you'll know I usually do a big cook up every Saturday - usually 4-5 different dishes - and pack these into a dozen little dinner containers for lunch and dinner for the rest of the week! Luckily these skills transferred well, and I think I did a pretty good job with my "feast" considering I only had the idea of a dinner party 2 hours before my housemates got back. Soo much fish.
