Fishing charter versus fishing charter
Our Stories
This week on the Take a Break program, we had two fishing charters scheduled for the group from a primary school in northern Victoria. Naturally, this evolved into a huge competition on which group could catch the most fish and the biggest fish.
Fishing group 1 on Tuesday were faced with average boating conditions. A howling southerly wind and big swell on the bay kept us close to the shore as the waves were too wild out deeper. Being closer to shore may be more protected, but it also means less and smaller fish. As the morning went on for group 1, we weren’t catching much and the rolling waves became too much for a few seasick participants.
Group 1’s final fish count was only 10 flathead, which were all undersized. It was then soon found out that group 1 had packed bananas on the boat for morning tea – this is a well-known fisherman’s bad luck omen!
Fishing group 2 on Wednesday had much nicer conditions on the water, with only a very light breeze. This meant they could head out into deeper water than group 1, with a much better chance to catch some decent fish. As the rods hit the water, the fish started to bite straight away – the flathead were hungry! There were lots of little flathead that were fun to catch, but still plenty of keepers for a meal.
Just as we were about to pull up the rods to head back, a participant’s rod started “going nuts”, as she said, and she described the rod as almost bending in half with the line running out fast. As she started to reel in the rod, we all thought it could be a snapper but as the line came in more, we could see a grey shadow in the water. One participant then yelled, “Shark! It’s a shark!” He was right – it was a gummy shark, and a decent sized gummy shark. The amount of noise and excitement coming from all the children was so amazing to see.
Our Chef Kim was pretty excited to cook up a feast of gummy shark for us all to enjoy, as you can see in the photo below.
Group 2 most definitely won the fishing competition and bragging rights for the rest of the week on program at Cottage.
