Sunday is usually pancake day, but not today; not enough
time. We had to be up at the dolphin feeding by 7:45! The tradition of feeding
the dolphins started more than 30 years ago when Monkey Mia was just a small
van park at the end of a very rough dirt road and the locals used to give them
a bit of left over bait or by catch. Not anymore! Now there are 2 guides and a
heap of volunteers and every dolphin that visits is named and anything that
happens from calving to getting a scratch is photographed and recorded.
While it was a stage show it was educational and the
dolphins are ‘wild’ animals. Apparently we choose the right day as there were
18 dolphins that turned up to have a look at the 75 – 100 people lined up ever
so obediently in ankle deep water. After about 30 minutes 5 volunteers turned
up with 3 fish each, for the 5 dolphins that they feed with people being
selected to feed one fish. They severely restrict the feeding so the dolphins
don’t become dependent on their apparently more intelligent feeders. The boys
were selected first up and as you can see by the picture I was less that
prepared to take the pic! Oh well the experience is more important that the
pic!
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| Another one of the "Are We There Yet" bucket list! |
Once we had our dolphin fix we headed back to camp where I
proceeded to ‘upgrade’ all of our fishing gear. All of the 5 or 10lb line went
off and on went the 30 and 40lb braid. The water is warmer and (hopefully) we
will be in for some fish that not only put up a good fight but are big enough
and tasty enough to eat! An hour or so later and we were in the water, Vince
had also give me a rough idea of where we should go so we headed straight
there. While when ‘sightseeing’ Rufus is big enough for the 4 of us, once the
fishing gear is added there isn’t enough room for De, so she had to stay at
home.
We trolled for a short while and it was awesome to see Sam,
at 7, dragging an oversized popper through the water and it doing exactly the
same thing as you see on the TV...bar the catch.... Oh well we decided to do
some bottom bashing in the hope of getting a ‘pinky’ or a ‘blacky’ which is
Westralian for a snapper, the pink being the same as we get around Bris-Vegas.
We drifted for a while with not much happeneing and then my rod bent over like
a circus contortionist. As my ‘good’ reel is broken I had to pull out Dad’s old
Fibreglass Alvey that weighs about 3 Kg and still has his line on it from about
10 years ago (no joking). Well I was in for the fight of my life. I hadn’t seen
a 7ft rod bend quite so hard and the boys were a mixture of excitement and
sheer terror watching this unfold. All I was thinking is how the hell I was
going to get whatever was on the end of my line in the boat, as it is only a
2.5 tinny and whatever was on the end felt like it was about 2m long! After a
few minutes we managed to drag up a shark about 1 – 1.5m in length. It was
pretty unhappy and thankfully it managed to chew through the line a few seconds
after we had a really good look at him!
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| A smaller version that came later on! |
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| A North Western Blow Fish - One of the ugliest things I have ever seen!
It was almost comical as over the next hour I was the only
one who landed any fish. The boys had the same rigs and bait but couldn’t get
any thing, Jacko couldn’t even lose his bait! Ahh the fickle fishing gods! In
the end I managed to get a blacky and a whiting (on a 4/0 hook). Satisfied we
had enjoyed ourselves we headed back for a late lunch.
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The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing aroung the pool
while the boys played classic catches. Fish was on the menu and it was great to
have some really nice tasting, super fresh fish!
We regularly play Uno at night and have a pretty serious month by month competition going. While we were at the pool there was a German 'family' (the kids are 17 & 18) playing and they ended up camping next to us. So we invited them over for a game or two. We had heaps of fun as they had all these new rules that we haven't ever played before that are really going to spice up the April comp!
We put the boys to bed and had a few more drinks with the neighbours before drifting of to bed..man fishing makes you tired...
We regularly play Uno at night and have a pretty serious month by month competition going. While we were at the pool there was a German 'family' (the kids are 17 & 18) playing and they ended up camping next to us. So we invited them over for a game or two. We had heaps of fun as they had all these new rules that we haven't ever played before that are really going to spice up the April comp!
We put the boys to bed and had a few more drinks with the neighbours before drifting of to bed..man fishing makes you tired...
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