06-18-2001, 08:17 PM
My first memory of fishing is of my grandfather taking me fishing from the jetty near his home. We had a hand line, some small hooks, and some sloppy bait. We caught four tiny fish which I carried back in triumph. They were not served for dinner. I think they were given to the cat.<br><br>Later as I grew a little older I used to enjoy fishing from the rocks along the coast near my mother's beach house on the New South Wales Far South Coast. Sometimes I caught gurnards or other edible fish. More often I only caught tough and tasteless bigger fish that liked to travel through those waters. Sometimes too I accidentally caught an eel. They looked like black snakes and seemed inherently nasty and evil. They were ferocious and bit you with their nasty sharp teeth if you tried to get them off your line. If you used a nylon line they usually bit through it and took off back into the depths of the sea or their caverns under the rocks, dragging hooks and line after them. Once I used a metal trace on a line which caught an eel, and I watched with horrified amazement as it writhed around and around the line and eventually beheaded itself.<br><br>When I was an adult and bought my first open boat my son and stepdaughters used to enjoy going out in it to go fishing. It was only in fairly shallow water, and sometimes we used crab nets to catch blue swimming crabs. On other occasions we let lines float across the surface of the water and sometimes caught garfish. I liked to throw a line towards the sea bed, with several hooks covered by large sloopy baits. These sometimes caught whiting or flathead. On one alarming occasion when I puleld the line in there were two whiting heads and not much else on the hooks, so presumably there was something big and hungry in the vicinity under water.<br><br>Taking children out in boats meant I did not manage much fishing. Most of my time was spent untangling the children's fishing lines, or sorting out the inevitable situation that when two children fishing from opposite sides of the boat both think they have caught something big and strong, that more likely than otherwise meant that they had tangled their lines under the boat.<br><br>When fishing from the bigger boats that the husband of my Adelaide days bought I quite often caught whiting. Sometimes I caught snapper. I was more successful at catching fish than he was and so he used to tell everyone who might listen that it was because of the crazy way I baited hooks. He claimed that the fish who went past laughed so much at the sight of those baits that they fell on them accidentally. I did not complain about that. At least I did catch fish.<br><br>Sometimes I went fishing from the Wallaroo jetty in the evening, and caught snapper there. One night I caught a good sized snook. Again my husband commented about fish laughing so much that they accidentally get hooked.<br><br>I did not have much experience of river fishing until I first spent a holiday with my now husband in New Zealand.<br><br>The village where I live is on a plateau beside the Grey River. The river levels change a lot and the path of the river moves as the result of floods. In the years before my daughters were born I came to love and enjoy fishing in that river.<br><br>It is a time for solitude. If my husband and I both went fishing we would be each heading in a different direction, one up and the other down the river. He taught me to use a lighter rod than I was used to, so as to cast some distance away and hope that the flash of a lure might attract a trout. When he first bought a trout rod for me he accidentally broke the top off it while he was putting it in the car to bring it home to present to me. He fixed it so that it is just a few inches shorter than it started off being.<br><br>Catching fish is not essential when I go fishing. Part of me just wants the opportunity to be enjoying the quiet, where the only sound is the river; and breathing in the scenery and just being part of its enormity.<br><br>At first the river used to take a toll from me in lures. At first it worked out at about one lure per three trout. My skill improved after that, but ther is always the risk of finding a new snag through the trees and rocks that are washed down the river during floods each year.<br><br>If the river is dirty through there having been rain in the last day or two it seems that the trout are more likely to bite if there is a worm on a hook, than to take a lure.<br><br>There was an old broken bridge that you could look down in to the river from. Some days I used to go there and stand watching a huge fish moving around in one deep pool of the river. That bridge has been demolished now. As light fades in the evening along the river one can see fish jump.<br><br>There are huge eels too in that river. They can be caught on large hooks baited with bits of meat, connected to strong line by metal traces. A small tin of cat food with a few holes punched in to it is good at attracting eels towards where the hook and line are set.<br><br>Eel can be tasty, especially if smoked; but to my mind it is nowhere near as delicious as trout that has only had an hour or two between being in the river and coming out of the pan.<br><br>Since the birth of my daughters I have not been able to go fishing. I have promsied myself a fishing licence again this year. My husband jokes that whereas other women go off to have cups of tea with friends or get their hair done or go shopping when their youngest child starts school, he is sure that on that day I will be able to be found wearing my gumboots, enjoying the solitude of fishing somewhere not far from home, along the Grey River.<br><br>He is probably right.<br><br>Submit your Fishing Adventure Stories to win great prizes at ReMemory.Com