I had my alarm set for 5:30 to make
sure I had time to have breaky and walk the 150m to the beach to be sure I was
there by 6am for my rendezvous with the lobster boat. The reality was i was
lying there waiting for it to go off as I was too excited and nervous to sleep!
I really had no idea of what I was getting myself into and what the blokes that
were taking me out were going to be like. When they arrived at 6 on the dot
they backed their tender tinny down to the water, 5 of us jumped in and we were
off. The sun had not yet broken the horizon and the reds and oranges of the morning
sky were iridescent there was not a breath of wind so the bay was like a mirror
and the point where the water ended and land started was hard to discern.
There was no messing around and
these guys, Simon the Skipper and Matt the Deckie, knew what to do and when to
do it, they were a well oiled machine! Within a couple of minutes off arriving
we were on our way and Matt was already cutting up the bait. After leaving the
bay we motored along the coast for about 20 minutes before we reached the spot
where the first pot was dropped yesterday. They have some pretty cool gear on
the boat and each time a pot is dropped they mark it on their map plotter. They
drop about 100 pots a day, 7 days a week, 6 months of the year and Simon had
been doing it for 12 years, so you can imagine how many points he had on his
map (it’s getting close to a ¼ of a million if you take into account the time
he spent as a decky)!
We wove our way from pot to pot and after no time we had a flock of albatross following us, feeding on the bait that is discarded from each pot. They are a funny creature and look like a seagull that has been put in a magical machine that expands its body size but the bird can’t handle its size making it as clumsy as ever. About an hour later a rather large bronze whaler shark showed up to have a feed. Then a couple more of his friends paid us a visit. In the end we had 6 of these creatures all 3 – 4 meters long swimming lazily around.
We got my underwater video out and zip tied it to a gaff and had some fun filming them swim around. A couple of them had a go at the camera thinking it was a tasty morsel of Australian Salmon which is why you see the camera come out of the water.....once you watch the video you will understand why I was reconsidering going for a swim this afternoon!
Check your volume settings before you press play - I'm still learning!
We kept collecting the pots and
going around the far side of Langhorne Island where the boat was within
spitting distance of the rocky shoreline. It was pretty exhilarating to be so
close the island but pretty scary considering the little fish we had seen.
Eventually we had all 96 pots in and neatly stacked on deck of the boat. At
around 30 – 35kg per pot that is an amazing 3 ½ tons worth of pots that Matt
had transported (I think I did 5 or 6 of them) from one end of the boat to the
other – I am guessing he won’t need to go to the gym this afternoon!
We had managed to catch 105
crayfish or lobsters in varying sizes from having to chuck a few that were
undersized back to some absolute monsters that resembled a medium sized dog
more than a lobster! After a quick lunch we headed back for some new territory
and started to put the pots out again. It was like clockwork, Simon drives the boat around watching
the sounder carefully and as soon as he sees a decent bit of rocky outcrop on
the floor, some 30m below, he toots the ships horn and Matt drops the pot over.
Before the does this he has to reconnect the pot to a 30m rope and the rope the
float. It was pretty intense at times as Simon was tooting the horn pretty regularly!
Around 2pm we rolled back into
Pondy (which is what the locals call it...and seen I’ve been on a lobster boat
surely I’m a local now!) and I headed back to camp. The family was all very excited
to hear about my adventures and soon we were heading back down to the bay to
take Rufus out. For the next hour or so we dragged the boys, and their new BFF,
up and down the edge of the bay on their boogie boards while I kept a very keen
eye out for large bronze coloured objects just below the surface!
Matt had given me a tip on
catching a few fish in the bay and we headed out, with Bradyn, to troll for some
Snoot using metal slugs or spoons. I had no idea what a snoot look like but
figured I would worry about that when we landed one. On the way out saw a couple of fins and some wash about 20m
away and was pretty bloody nervous as Rufus is pretty small compared to the
bronzies I had witnessed a few hours earlier! I was relieved to find that it
was a pod of about 30 dolphins that were frolicking about around us. I managed
to get some awesome videos of them but somehow managed to delete them before
getting them onto the computer!
We trolled for a while and Sambo
started to bring his line in as he must have got to close to the bottom and
hooked some weed. We could see his lure braking the surface and then I noticed
it had a distinctive silver tinge to it! He reeled it in and he had caught a
55cm snoot, which must be up there with one of the more ugly fish in the world
with some razor sharp teeth!
We headed back to camp and
prepared out fishy feast that included today’s snoot, yesterday’s King George
whiting and Tommy Rough as well as a Bream and Silver Trevally from previous
catches. It was a pretty good feed!
Simon and Matt dropped around for
a few beers as we put the boys to bed, with the rum coming out a little while
later. We sent them home a little while later as they had to be up at 4am to go
out again! I went to sleep after one of the coolest days of the trip, with my
legs still very wobbly from a big day on the water!
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