Have a few fishing stories, my dad was a fisherman, I was too on a prawn trawler and been around boats in one way or another most of my life.
First one of my dad (RIP) he was skippering a Tuna boat, it was actually quite a small wooden boat on the west coast of Africa. Having more recently seen a photo of it I realised it looked big because I was quite small ie under 5 yo. Anyway on one particular day they were into a school of Tuna and one of the crew died, not sure how but think accident. Anyway Dad orders that his body be put to the side and they keep fishing, after all stopping fishing would not bring him back to life.
Another from dad is that they had filled the boat with so much tuna the water was at the gunnels, they managed to get to five miles off the coast and the boat more or less sunk. Dad swan to shore to get help to retrieve the crew and boat.
Was about 15 when I brought a boat and would go out fishing with dad most Saturdays in Cockburn sound, dad had this ability to read the bottom without a sounder. I would drive the boat, he would give direction of which way to go, to slow down and when to stop. More often than not we would get bites right away, when they stopped biting he would direct me to another spot.
So that leads me onto a memorable moment years later, think my son was about 8-10 yo and I borrowed a boat to take my dad and son fishing. I asked my son if he thought we would catch any fish, he didn't think we would. Well usually story, dad directs where to go and stop. Son got sea sick but with fish on the bit he got involve. We ended up with a really good haul of various species, my son was impressed.
Banana prawn season in the Gulf of Carpentaria, you spend the day cruising around watching the sounder looking to find what maybe a school of Banana prawns. One particular day we had a person from head office on board and skipper put me on duty to drive the trawler looking for school of Banana prawns. Well the sun had gone down, skipper had passed out drunk and stoned (in hindsight heroin as well) so decided to drop anchor. Low and behold there looked to be a school of Banana prawns on the sounder in the morning directly under where we where anchored. Pulled up the anchor, shot the nets through and we scored
Banana prawns again we found what looked to be school of Banana prawns on the sounder, we went to shoot the nets through it and another Trawler close by seeing us do that shot their nets away. We missed the school as did the other trawler, the other trawler obviously didn't see what we saw on the sounder and steamed away.
We went back looking for the school of Banana prawns on the sounder, found it shot the nets and got it. First shot alone had the sorting tray filled with prawns and after a couple more shots the deck was knee deep in prawns. We had way more than we could handle, called sister ships but most where too far away. We filled the snap freezer, brine tanks and ended up shovelling heaps over the side.
Sharks Bay WA on a prawn trawler, tuna run through there and we would through a line out for some. This was not sports fishing, we used 8mm rope with 200kg wire trace. One morning while sorting the last shot we see a school of tuna going mad on the by-catch we are putting over the side.
Skipper and I decide to have a crack at them. We get the crew that were sorting the catch to only dribble the by-catch over the side holding most back. Using 8mm rope with 200kg wire trace and barb-less Tuna hooks I would put a squid as bait on the hook and no sooner did it hi the water that a tuna would hit it. In the space of an hour I landed about 90 tuna
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