A wee spot of fishing

Thanks Patrick for taking me out fishing and thanks especially for catching my dinner.
Patrick is a young guy who lives across the horse paddock just around the lake from mum and dad's place in Tuross. He has a tinny, a 3.3hp 2 stroke and an infectious love of fishing that he sates by heading out in the boat after he's done his homework and with a spot of weekend work in a local fishing shop. If Mark Twain had have had the pleasure Tom Sawyer would have been a biography and not a fictional tail. I very much enjoy his company.
The evening before we left we managed to squeeze in a fishing outing after he came home from school. Tackle, nets, oar, fuel, Motor and accoutrements in the back of car and off we went for the short trip across the hill to Tuross lake. Unlock boat chained to tree, attach and fuel motor chuck in tackle box etc. and wade out pushing boat through shallows to edge of sea grass whilst trying not to do a Steve Irwin.
On previous trips we had fished on soft plastic lours but today Patrick insisted on using live nippers sucked from their homes in the shallow tidal flats so we stopped off on a bar in the middle of a branch of the Tuross river where it enters the deepest part of the lake. Picking our way around the largest of the piles of pelican poo we raced the light to get enough bait together to do battle with leviathans that awaited.

looking for nippers
After collecting 60 or so of the little beasts we pushed of and immediately hit a snag - or rather we didn't, we just floated around in the channel like, well, uncannily like a boat with an engine that wont start. Drawing on my manly "man over motor powers" and resorting to the tried and true technique of pulling the lid off and poking a few things the motor spluttered to a start and I retired to my position in the bow and the captain piloted us to his secret fishing spot.
I can say the bait worked like magic. Every time we cast within a minute we were reeling in another brim or small snapper. Problem is they were all about the size of the magnificent trophy I'm holding up in the picture below.

Thanks Patrick