A full circle fishing moment

My family and I are extremely fortunate to spend so much time on K’gari and never take our trips to paradise for granted.

As is normally the case, our September school holidays were spent on the northern part of the island at Orchid Beach, passing our days at the beach near Waddy Point, K’gari.

My eldest two children Rose and Will have spent a lot of time at the beach and are getting to the age where they really are starting to enjoy their fishing.

Their little one-year-old brother Freddy wakes up at the crack of dawn, meaning it’s the perfect combination for early morning sessions during our holiday at K’gari.

My earliest fishing memories are of my dad waking me up at sunrise during our Gold Coast holidays, where we stayed only a short walk from the beach.

I remember walking onto the cold white morning sand as if it was yesterday, with dad and his father, my nonno, leading the way to the nearest surf gutter.

I seldom see people fishing those busy Gold Coast beaches these days but my goodness, they used to produce some cracking whiting back in the day.

 

No doubt those in the know still catch a few before the crowds arrive.

While we used to buy bloodworms from Miami Bait and Tackle all those years ago, on K’gari it’s all about pulling beachworms – something I’m absolutely useless at.

Thankfully, my wife Kate is a downright guru.

In fact, her whole family are pretty handy at it and, as she always reminds me, you can’t catch a whiting without any bait.

Tides on our most recent trip were perfect for an early morning beachworm session, followed by a crack at the whiting and then home in time for brekky.

In recent years, there have been plenty of beachworms around Ocean Lake.

 

Though a strong wind can make them really timid and tricky to catch, so my advice is to find someone who knows what they’re doing and marry them!

With bait sorted, I had eyed off a few little gutters at the bottom of the northern beach entry.

We started fishing in the larger of the two gutters and didn’t turn a reel for 10-15 minutes, which was disappointing given the conditions were perfect, in my opinion.

The kids were sticking with it, yet I could see that the lack of fish and their growing hunger for breakfast was starting to distract them from the task at hand.

We moved to the second gutter, literally 250m from where we had been fishing.

This was a much smaller system though looked very similar to the first spot – calm shallow water no more than 30-50cm deep with plenty of melon holes, and it was starting to fill up as the tide trickled in.

 

We pulled up and, as we headed down to the water’s edge for a cast, I noticed what I thought was a heap of weed in the water.

Hopes sunk at the sight, until I realised it wasn’t weed I was seeing, it was a massive school of whiting cruising in the first few waves.

Quality polarised sunglasses make such a difference!

They weren’t huge fish, however they were hungry and the next 45 minutes was mayhem.

I baited hooks, cast, dehooked fish, baited hooks, cast, dehooked fish at a record rate.

The whiting were well and truly on and Rose and Will had an absolute ball.

 

While whiting have never seemed to be too big in this area of the island, there were plenty of legal fish among them.

Fishing doesn’t get much simpler than light gear and a simple rig of a running ball sinker above about 80cm of trace to a single hook.

As the mayhem unfolded, I cast my mind back to an unforgettable session I had with Dad on Bribie Island.

As always, we were up early and made our way to Red Beach, an ever-reliable spot for whiting, especially in September-October.

By mid-morning, we’d hardly caught a fish, it just wasn’t happening.

Instead of going home, we drove over to the main surf beach, with no real expectation of things turning around.

 

As was the case at K’gari recently, you could see the whiting surfing down the face of the waves and, on this particular day, they were quality 30cm plus fish, which is typical for Bribie Island.

My whiting session memories with Dad had come full circle.

I’d love to know how many people’s first fish was a whiting or bream.

I reckon it’d be a high percentage of anglers in southeast Queensland.

We ended up with 30 nice whiting in that early morning K’gari session and the news spread quickly.

The next morning, we were accompanied by the whole extended family, and it was a good thing too because worms were very tricky to come by, though we got it done.

And, after another slow start on whiting, we eventually managed to get onto them again, with the quality even better than the day before.

 

This time we brought brekky to the beach – pancakes with Nutella, strawberries, banana, maple syrup and ice cream.

And yours truly didn’t get one bit of it… until I’d baited up and dehooked another stack of lovely whiting.

We kept another nice feed – given that where we were staying we had about 18 mouths to feed – and threw a heap of fish back for next time.

The kids and adults had a ball lining up to get stuck into a few whiting during the hot bite.

The biggest mystery for me was wondering where everyone had disappeared to when it was time to fillet and clean all those whiting!

I was left alone with that task.

Of course, when their catch was covered in panko crumbs and had spent a few minutes in hot oil, they all reappeared – go figure.

Catch you.