Bundaberg
06 June 2008 | Bundaberg
25 degrees - light winds
Yours truly pretends to go fishing.
The recent spate of light winds appears to end tomorrow as a new low front moves in. Today we made the most of this wonderful weather as we sailed to Bundaberg, a distance of 42 nm. We might be holed up again for a few days as the forecast predicts 30 knots .
In the meantime... after a number of queries regarding the absence of fishing tackle in photos, and even though I've never caught a fish in my life, with my fishing advisor (Peter from 'Valhalla'), and we went shopping for fishing gear back in Mooloolaba. We purchased only the best gear - Penn, for those who know this stuff - to give me every chance to on being one-up on a fish.
We got back to Andamon and Peter rigged everything up and taught me how to troll (using lures) setting the right tensions and other stuff like that. For the last 2 days we've been doing exactly as instructed, but my perfect record of 0 fish caught still stands. I'm beginning to think this whole fishing thing is a conspiracy set up by people that sell fishing gear. In an earlier part of the journey from Coffs Harbour to the Gold Coast, Rob bought his own hand lines and he caught nothing, even though we trolled through marine parks where one would expect to find lots of fish. I've also noted that Peter's boat Valhalla isn't actually overflowing with excess fish!.
Fishing increases tension on board , because we go into a panic everytime we see dolphins, trying to bring the lure in quickly, in case we catch one (BTW are dolphins edible ?). So about the only benefit I can see in fishing is that it gives you something to do to fill in the day. Talking about Dolphins, Lyn and I have noticed that in NSW the dolphins always swim towards Andamon and play around the bows, sometimes up to 20 at a time, but in Qld the dolphins keep their distance. We've seen numerous pods, but always 100 metres away, never closer. Strange we think, maybe they know we are from south of the border.
So back to fishing, not being a quitter, I will again attempt to catch a fish, or give the whole thing over to Lyn who will probably catch a marlin within seconds of the lure hitting the water.