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Got a fishing story you'd like to share?
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 Expect the unexpectedFrom: B. Parry This is a similar story to one written a while back about a fishing comp. Unfortunately there are many people who have lived out a similar story of one of the dreaded fish of the sea! Late last year I had been fishing a small saltwater stream in Lakes Entrance with a friend all day. We watched for hours as two others across the other side pulled in fish after fish. They seemed to get bigger! Mullet, bream, luderick, they were all there! But yet, no matter what we did, where we cast, what bait we used, we couldn't get a bite. At times we were even casting in the same spot as the other two. Heck we even got out the fly rods to no avail. Seeing their lines tighten, their rods bend, whereas ours remained motionless. As we were pondering about "calling it quits" a man decided to come and fish on our side of the embankment. BANG! First cast he pulls up a lovely luderick! I can't repeat precisely the word I said, but let's just say if there was a religious person around they would have made me say "Hail Mary's" for the rest of the day. Luckily we had a few beers, so time wasn't going by slowly, it was a great day, and we began to see the humour in the other two filling up their bucket with what looked like 100+ fish. (They kept them all, large and small!) It was about 3pm, we had been there since 10am. Suddenly, out of the blue, BANG! Up I got from the sand, I had a great little imprint as I had been sitting there rather motionless for sometime now. BANG! My rod bends almost unshapely again! I pick it up from the holder, something heavy has definitely run off... the drag's resulted in a lot of line coming out, I tighten it up and begin the fight. My mate moves frantically... Snapper? Luderick? Bream? Dinner is served! Everybody is now watching. 10 minutes later I see some colour... I see some white and green, and think, gee, what could it be? The excitement has caused a block in my abilities to think, not that there's much ability there anyway! The drag screams again, it's another 5 minutes before I get it back in sight, there's sweat dripping down my forehead, a sea of blood runs through the veins on my arms... I get it within one metre of the bank... Sure enough, out comes that same word as I yelled earlier. "*%#@!!!" The green and white had been the colours of a great, big, huffing, stinky toadfish, looking up at me with an expression only a toadfish could have. My heart sank, I could hear sniggering, my mate cried (well almost) and that's when it dawned on me... that was the only toadfish to be caught all day, by me, and it was huge! I don't know if this was a good thing or not, but as I brought the line up, SNAP! It broke off, and swam off, flicking its tail in almost a "taunt" back at me. I was almost tempted to swim after it. Now I'm not a cruel man, I release toadies and banjos completely unharmed. But in this case, who knows! They say good things come to those who wait, well... we waited... and waited... and then caught a toadfish of photographic proportions. Maybe we were just trying to hard, as Homer Simpson says, "Trying is the first step towards failure!" So the lesson of this story is, never try :) Cheers. B. Parry. (29 April 2002) |
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