Team St Mike's "Perfect Storm"

Catch Report 8/10/2006

This boat trip turns out as another memorable outing for me as well as the team mates. Phillip was granted the gracious off day from church by his commanding officer (CO) Amy to attend boating with us instead. Chen as usual got all his preparation ready in 1st hand. He made his infamous 'berley bomb' beforehand and he already had acquired 2 bottles of tuna oil! That's dedication. Jeff our manager was good to go as usual with his cool undetered look before fishing. Mind you, he has already mastered the art of angling, this trip saw him fighting the fish with abso'bloody'lutely without any facial expression, like he's treating big trevallies fight as "Is This The Best You Can Tussle With Me" kind of feeling.. hahaha..

This time round, my fishingkaki mate Rocky wanted to go. I've promised him a few times to bring him out and so he could make time and get out finally. He brought his newly acquainted girlfriend and his girlfriend's friends which made out 4 persons on another boat. Vance, our usual friendly boatman wasn't there that morning and so his sidekick, whom we don't like, handled for us. He emphasised that we need to be back before 12pm as there's a strong wind warning. Anyway, he prep 2 boats for us and our team ended getting onto a 4 seater! Chen was fuming mad that he felt we were mistreated and worse of all, we had to wait for him to slowly come and get us connected! Anyway, we didn't wanna spoil our moods and so everyone let it rest. Rocky had to get a crash course from the sidekick on boat driving but soon we were out and headed straight to the cakes.

Once there, we anchored first. Rocky had no drama too in anchoring and seems he had gotten a sweet spot right almost next to us. So practically we were fishing side by side. Soon, Rocky's boat were on fire, pulling in trevs after trevs! By then, almost all his rods were going off, and his female companions were pulling in fishes like no tommorrow. The team were starting to get agitated but in a fun way. Luckily this pumps us up and in no time Jeff started to crank the 1st trev up. In no time, me and Chen got constant hook ups and our boat looks more promising now. Of course nothing spells competition and we make sure everyone had a ball. As usual, the trevs come and go in a short window of time but we were still able to get the odd one up. This time round, we kept all the yellowtails, as Chen's workplace had a malaysian auntie who requested for them as she wanted to cook up some malaysian style deep fried fish in special chilli paste.

Then, I had one paricular "the one that got away" story to be told. While I was busy with my paternoster rig, my surecatch rod with a drift cubing bait got smacked and the rod almost fell into the water if not for Phillip's quick reaction to help save it! Thanks Phil! I didn't even need to strike as I could already feel the strong hookup. The fish was heavy and the run was fierce. Still, after about a minute to 2 of fight the sad thing happened, *ping*. I lost it. The hook was gone but my 12lb leader was still there. Damn me! For using such a low poundage and not properly snelling my hook! I'm still mourning the lost, we were all curious what that big fish was.

Soon, it was time to pack up as we had wanted to return the boat on time. But we only managed to leave that place right on 12. The trip back from the cakes to the Rose Bay entrance was calm. Then while we were right in the bay, the wind changed drastically. It blew from Phil's side at first and then turned right in front of us as we were heading in the southerly direction. It's the worst situation you'll ever want to be in as the boat copped lots of water and chop and the wind was like a 40knots "perfect storm" style but in a dinghy version! Long story short, we made it back but everyone was shaken and cold. All of us were totally drenched. The worse is Rocky's boat was always behind us but till about 1km left to shore, their boat engine died. We could clearly see their boat being stranded in the middle of the bay and luckily the boatman plus Vance was there went out to help them out and tow them to the nearest beach in Vaucluse. Chen was pissed at the sidekick's remarks of hastily asking him to get out of the boat. Vance was directly the opposite, saying encouraging words that we made it back in time. Still, I kinda felt bad that we didn't heed the sidekick's advice to return early but hey, we're customers, aren't we?! Alright, enough of whinging, team stmikes spirits are still strong and we've definitely learnt our lesson.

Me and Phil did a "brokeback" style photo but this is only the 1st of future sleazy installments. Hehe..

Total tally: 12 x Silver Trevallies, 21 x yellowtails. ( 1 dropped LJ, damn! )

Ronald