Late post...

Having worked to 1.45 AM to get the proofs in (which - when your day starts at between 5-5.30 is a longish day) thursday, and of course the dogs were less keen on this silly idea of you'd like to sleep in because you worked late (even with an eye-mask and the blinds drawn this is touch and go with me - I'm light sensitive in sleep, and will wake up if you shone a torch on my face, for example) and so friday started at its usual usual time. Surprisingly I did get about 1.4K done - but should have gone to bed early and been nice and fresh...

Yeah well. This is Dave Freer we're talking about. Willy Weather said we'd have 1 knot winds last night. He lied, but still, we went down to Lady Barron to see if it was true, at about 7.45PM where indeed the Trevally are all around the wharf. So are teen-age yoof and their music and entertainment on a friday night... (clubbing is a bit limited here) so, although B got one squid, we retreated to the flounder grounds, even if the water was riffled a bit.
We were alone there, never a good sign, as Bud and Rex know good conditions better than most of the world, and show us yoof ('cause we are, to them) how it is done. The wind ripple was a bit much, really. It was patchy though. Anyway. We walked... and walked - about mid/upper thigh water, maybe a kilometer or so. And saw... squat. Well, a 3 foot wingpan skate, and a trevally accomanying it.(I had a go at the trevally but missed). No I AM NOT spearing a 3 foot skate ... with a vicious barbed spine in 3 feet of water. Unless I killed it outright, I will get spiked, or lose my spear. Besides I have a soft spot for them, and the only time I had skate wing, I didn't like it much.) A lot of puffer-fish. 3 little garfish (scooped 2 successfully, lost the other due to having a go at the next while it was still in the net. duh) Flounder = 0. I was blaming the bright moonlight. At this point real doubt that you can actually see flounder is creeping into your mind - as well as water creeping into your toes. B's new waders didn't leak but mine do. The only comfort was we'd seen no jet-trails of flounder stirred muddy water either. Anyway we came back shallower because it's less hard work... and within 150 yards of the truck found flounder and squid. There is quite a different strategy to spearing both - Squid, I have found are happy to believe they can't be seen in perifery of the light.If you shine a light directly on them for more than a few seconds, they're offski... The flounder are easier - as long as you spot the eyes, keep the light Anyway got 7 and 2 squid (lost one squid before I learned the light-trick) and came home with my wet foot, and B just generally frozen. Then of course the fish still had to be cleaned and freezer/fridged. At midnight, it was done.

And so like woos I went to bed and did not post.

Hunting and the hunter

Imagine, if you can, being out in the sea -- knee deep maybe, but two hundred yards from shore on a 'dark' - a moonless night, a smuggler's night. The looming bulk of Strzelecki mountain blacks out a part of the sky. The rest of it is spiked with a shawl of fairy-light stars, and the sky is so clear that they seem close. It almost looks as if you could poke one of them with your flounder-spear and short out the whole lot. The sea, silent and just about as black as the mountain is lit by four tiny patches of underwater light. We're out hunting the hunter -- and a very unusual hunter it is too. Okay so I'm an ichthyologist so I would think so, but flounders (or soles) are weird with eyes that have migrated onto one side of their heads. They are the hunters of the shallow sand and mud flats where there is no cover and prawns and crabs and shoals of little needle-nose garfish think they are safe from ambush. Not so. The master of camoflage is lurking... and we're out in the dark doing something probably as ancient as humanity, trying to spear fish.



Okay so we're trying an art that was old before neolithic fish-hooks, that was common (and still practiced today)in ancient Greece. We do have an underwater light and not a piece of burning pitch-pine, and, rather than a poseidon-style trident off a Greek vase, a multipronged spear polycarbon spear (although Rex is still using a trident with a wooden shaft). To make up for this we have John-boy turning the light away just as you are ready to spear, and laughing like a drain at your cursing. It's still something humans have done forever, really (probably the turning the light away too). It fits in well to my ideas on self-sufficiency. Besides that there is something really very special about being out in the middle of the bay and having another flounderer come past "how many yer got?"
"Aw, 'bout seventy. n'you?"
"Yeah, 'bout that. It's a bad night."
(needless to say the real score is about 3 at this stage.)
I tried (and failed) to catch the needlelike garfish swimming into the pool of light with my hands. And caught a large swimming prawn... which like the idiot I am, I dropped. Barbs was better at spearing than I am, although I probably have the edge in spotting rocks that I thought looked like flounders.
Then back to gut and bag flounders and have the hot coffee we were dying for... somewhere near midnight we finally crawled into bed.
Flounders tonight for our tea (that means supper in other parts).

clams, flounders and passing turkeys

There was an early morning low tide this morning so we went to collect some clams (don't ask what species, I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Katelysia sp. at a guess - but they're quite small.) Anyway, the regulations allow us 100 pipi or clams or 200 wedge shells and don't seem to specify exactly what species they are, and there seem to be a bunch of Katelysia species living in that habitat and a few other species I really HAVE to find out what are and exactly where live. I'm a very selective predator/forager who believes very firmly in variety and leaving plenty for tomorrow. The locals have told me there are no clams here. And no mussels. And no oysters (well maybe in the North-East River - the North-East River is kind of like a mythical distant waterbody of Eden with EVERYTHING. Heh. It's maybe 50 Km away - and a good fishing spot. But I don't think it's the biological lost world. I think that's a lot closer - like all around here.)


It was a nice low tide and we got our bag limit quite quickly with minimum immersion in very cold water.

I took a few minutes to see if I could catch some mullet with the cast net.


I'm not heaven's gift to this - I just like it as a very visual way of fishing - see your fish-shoal and throw at them. Miss (mostly).


Well, that's the theory anyway. I caught 3 of these cute little flounder that I certainly never saw. Was fascinating putting them back and watching them vanish into the sand (I really need video clips of some of this stuff). And only 2 mullet - both under the 25 cm size. That's big for a shallows thrownetting mullet. I saw lots of very tiny ones but no major shoals of medium/large fish. Oh well, more things to find and enjoy finding.



Driving back past this incredible watercolour landscape



We saw some wild turkeys - about 25 of them. If they hadn't been in someone's else's fields but on the roadside I might have been tempted to try thrownetting them. I wonder if that is legal?