Page 71 - Bush 'n Beach Fishing mag

The rewards of mentoring
* from P70
The connection we
good fish on a trolled garfish, hooking up for a second time on the very next pass.
enced junior fishers in town.
cemented long ago was as strong as always – a bond founded on fish- ing.
His elation quickly turned to disappoint- ment as 1.5m of silver with a mean toothy grin broke the surface – rot- ten barracuda!
There were plenty of smiles at the end of the day, and I can as- sure you the biggest was plastered over my weathered mug!
Closer to home, I’ve been fishing regularly with a young neighbour of mine, Tom Hockey.
Our attention then turned to birds working schools of feeding fish wide of the coast.
What a joy it was to host a couple of future fishers to a day they’ll long remember.
His dad is a fisher- ies officer and had to work during the recent Weipa Fishing Classic, so I offered to take Tom and his younger brother Charlie out for the day, to see if we could find a fish or two that were worthy of the leader board.
Racing around af- ter fairly spooky tuna schools, we came across one of Weipa’s favourite fishing ‘lolly- pops’ – a bait ball!
The author mentored Wayne Rich when he was in his teens. Now he’s a grandfather.The bond of sh- ing transcending the ages.
We landed a heap of nice queen sh, mostly on poppers. This 860mm speci- men put Charlie on the Weipa Fishing Classic leader board.
Tom and Charlie cast lures into a bait ball as predators busted along the edges. The action was continuous for over three hours. Putting a couple of keen young- sters on to a motherlode was extremely satisfying.
Bush ’n Beach Fishing, December 2020 – Page 71
As with half of Weipa, we got away early from the Evans Landing boat ramp and headed south towards a spot I’d hoped would escape the attention of the masses.
The next three hours were a blur of action with queenfish, trevally, tuna, spanish mackerel and sharks smashing into a tightly packed mass of small baitfish until they virtually de- stroyed the school.
A few hard-working queenfish schools caused us to make a halt just past the new Amrun Jetty, where the hits came thick and fast on cast poppers and metal slugs.
We were constantly hooked-up to the vari- ous species, losing a heap of lures to bust- offs and bite-offs in the process.
We measured a couple of fish when the motor decided to stop due to running short of fuel.
Spaniards proved elu- sive – managing to shed hooks or sever mono leaders.
It took well over an hour to identify and sort the problem, so I made an executive de- cision to stay closer to home in case more complications arose.
Most of the trevally were hard-fighting brassies – a cousin to GT, these fish fight as hard kilo for kilo.
With a number of rea- sonable sized queenfish recorded and released, our focus was turned to big mackerel, so we headed to a spot where I thought a few might be found.
Mobs of mack tuna raced through the mass regularly, but only one was boated in the may- hem.
As suspected, they were there, and Charlie dropped a 1m fish on a popper he was casting over bommies, which occasionally produced giant trevally.
In spite of our fuel hiccup, the day had eventuated in almost non-stop action and plenty of new experi- ences, especially for Charlie.
Tom then missed a
One of his queenies ultimately scored sec- ond prize in the junior section of the Classic, a terrific result taking into account the num- ber of highly experi-
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