Fist & Boat Magazine (Australia)

Having been lucky enough to have been introduced into the fishing industry at a young age, I’ve been very fortunate to have been able to speak to thousands of people in most corners of the country. Of course those conversations almost always revolve around fishing, and to be more specific, lure and fly fishing.

I’ve just relocated from Cape York Peninsula after spending more than half my adult lifetime as a resident. It’s been a bittersweet occasion but I’m sure that my passion for the place will always stay with me. Once the Cape gets in your blood, it’s there forever! As many regular readers will be aware, the majority of my 35 year journey was spent as a professional fishing and adventure guide.

It was an early morning run out along the shipping channel to the 3rd buoy. It was April 1986. I had been living and working across the Gulf Country, from the NT border, up into the western side of Cape York Peninsula to as far north as Kowanyama and the Mitchell River, for more than a year. This was my first holiday break during that time and my first real chance to go fishing with mates.

Who doesn’t love a satay? Easy to eat, bursting with flavour and even tastier at a street food stall in Bali or Bangkok. It’s also easy to prepare this tasty treat at home. I’ve used shark meat to complement this month’s Featured Fish, but any firm fish like trevally or queenfish would work, or of course the traditional chicken. I’ve jazzed things up with a handful of prawns, scallop meat would also work well.

The old saying rolling stones never gather moss is one that perfectly sums up the power of momentum. When you are on the water fishing regularly, it’s not hard to maintain and build momentum, especially if you are catching plenty of fish. Lose that momentum and all of a sudden the thought of wetting a line seems too hard and excuses to not fish are very easy to find. I’ve seen my fair share of this and unfortunately I have even been there myself, especially when it comes to fishing offshore.

Let me paint the picture on how this story starts. It all started with a post on Facebook from a mate Gavin, back in June – The main line being “Waiting for a mate”. It then went on to say that he had a spot available for the annual NT trip that the he does as the regular mate had to pull out as he had a few things going on a could not commit. It then went on and explained the 2 possible dates, late September or late October.

Here in South East Queensland, we are blessed with an exciting mixture of both northern and southern species both in the estuaries and offshore. Inshore we have big mangrove jack, threadfin salmon, and even a solid population of barramundi these days, and on the offshore grounds we get a good run of pelagics moving down the coast over the warmer months.

Those of you who have read any of my previous articles from this publication will know that I get to travel rather frequently for work and that those locations I travel to, just so happen to be beautiful, quite often remote and most importantly, fish rich. I’m not going to lie, this is an amazing part of my job and is not something I take for granted.

I started out by using the title to this article as, “Fishing – The Changing Order”, suggested by good fishing mate, Kim Martin. Kim’s suggestion followed a lengthy discussion with a group of younger (and not-so-young) fishos whose opinions I greatly admire, about the relationship between observation and experience versus technology, and the reliance on it in today’s fishery . That there is a “changing order” is not in doubt: technology has encapsulated a fishing power surge.

Do you ever really lose skills once you have earned them? Have you ever heard the expression ‘it’s just like riding a bike?’ Well if you never learned to ride a bike when you were younger then this opening paragraph is going to be all sorts of confusing. Basically what I’m getting at is once you have leaned a skill then it really is hard to just forget it. What we do tend to see is maybe a bit of time to get back to the high standard that once was.