Dolphins of Tuross

Last day of hol's, goin'-ome tuhmorra

The last few day's have been a blast.

Take today for example:

Today I managed about two hours surfing and a few more body and boogie board surfing whilst mum and dad built sand castles on the beach with the kids.

Surfing - If you haven't I can't explain the feeling. Waves, powerful enough that given time will wear down headlands and reshape coastlines. Powerful enough to smash you teeth as they pile drive you arse through your neck if you fuck up. But awesome fun to play with dancing on a 6' length of pointy fiberglass bristling with blade like fins. Surfing is big, for many it is life. There are the finer points of wax selection, of etiquette, of leg rope selection - the culture and fashion, wave selection, fitness, your skill, pin tail or wedge. It goes on and on - if you are not initiated you will never find a way in.

Today I had one of the rarest surfing experiences - fantastic waves, a peaky steep right, all too myself. I had the joy of ride after ride of consistent waves in crystal clear water, of being underwater watching my reflection in the surface whilst duck diving under 1.5m curls.

My base of my ribs are sore from paddling and my arms are sore from dragging the board through the surf - but it is a good kind of sore.

After surfing and lunch on a picnic rug in the park, where the kids and I devoured a few hamburgers, with beetroot cauz were Aussie we got back and enjoyed the heat and suffered the view whilst savoring the beer mum dropped in my hand. Had a rest and then drove up the coast a ways to pick up Patrick - a 16 yo school kid who lives on the neighboring property from school in the next town. He took me fishing out on his boat. 6 magnificent fathead later we were heading back in only to be stopped by the dolphins trapped in the lake. (vid later).

Dinner was a sav blanc and fathead fillets in batter - so fresh they were quivering.

Raff is playing a fellow Spaniard in Melbourne whilst I'm sipping the last of the West Australian white.

How was your day?

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