Gorn Fishin'

Well, it was an interesting night's sleep last night. There were some younguns in the caravan park who had indulged rather too much in liquid refreshments and then felt the need to run yelling through the caravan park at midnight before beginning a game of cricket - complete with regular "thwacks" and "howzats".

When morning finally came, we were up early to get ready for our fishing trip. We packed lunch and then walked over to meet the bus to take us out to the boat. We gulped a couple of seasick tablets on the way. The boat travelled through the reef first and we enjoyed sitting on the bow to have a good look.

The boat is a 50 ft vessel which seemed quite sturdy (thankfully). We travelled about 19 miles offshore to fish in deep water. The trip was quite "lumpy" with 1.5 metre swells - not horrifically rough, but enough to make us hang on! On the way, Bronwyn made us a cuppa - one of the crew did comment on the amount of water that DIDNT get into the cups.... but I think she did a pretty good job in difficult circumstances.

We all travelled reasonably well on the way out, though Paddy did seem a little peaky and turned a lovely shade of green for a while.When we got to our destination (somewhere in the middle of the sea), we loaded up our lines and dropped the heavy sinkers overboard. We were fishing in water about 80 metres deep - so it took quite a while for the sinker to hit the bottom (and even longer to reel it back in).

Dad caught a couple of fish before succumbing to seasickness. He helpfully provided us with burley over the side for the rest of the day. He wasn't alone - there were a couple of teenage boys on the trip who spent most of it hanging over the side!

The fish were not biting that brilliantly so we moved location several times. On one move, the rope holding the anchor broke - it was quite an expensive event as the anchor and about 100 metres of top quality rope were lost (in 80 metres of water, there is not a chance they can recover it). The rope was worth $500 and the anchor $1100 - ouch!

After lunch I got onto a run of bites and caught 2 beautiful coral cod, a pink snapper and a blue line emperor (or something like that). I was pretty happy about that. The rest of our little group didn't do so well unfortunately!

We came back to Coral Beach - arriving back just after 5.00. We were all very tired and glad that the crew cleaned and filleted our fish for us. I won the BOB award (best on boat) for catching 2 coral cod. Apparently it is the first time that charter company have had one person catch 2 coral cod in a day. My prize was a stubby holder (very handy indeed!)

After watching the fish being filleted, we went down to the water for a quick swim and to watch the sunset - absolutely glorious!

Tonight we feasted on coral cod and snapper with yummy salads. We will probably eat the rest of the fish tomorrow.

Tomorrow is our big day...... out to swim with the Whale Sharks .... woooohooooo!!!!