Fishing Fruition

As we motored onto Broome in the light weather, fishing conditions were yet again perfect, Sandie and Barry cast the line out to see if we could get any bites. Having left Southport on the 31st of July and sailing over 3000M our fishing efforts would finally come to fruition! With the sound of the reel spinning as something swum against it Barry grabbed the rod and shouted we’ve got one! Impressively, Barry only wrestled with the fish for around 5mins. Alan was on the gaff and we(the royal we…..I had nothing to do with this) landed a giant Spanish Mackeral on the deck.

Dinner for the next couple of nights

Barry’s new tinder photo

I stepped back hoping to not get given the task of knocking the poor thing out. With my fishing experiences being mainly limited to catching blue cod in the Marlborough Sounds I had no idea how to deal with this mammoth fish. As luck would have it, Alan happened to be standing closest to the fish so took one for the team and put our fish out of it’s misery. Looking fairly traumatised after this(Alan not the fish), Barry stepped in and helped chop up a huge amount of steaks and fillets for us to feast on for the next few days. We even had an abundance to share with Silver Fern and managed to a trade for olive oil and coconut milk which we were short on.

Matt trying his best not to get blood on his boat

The line was cast again and about 30mins later Barry landed another fish! Thankfully something a little smaller this time. This was believed to be a Queenie. Karen stepped up this time, showing her skills from a previous life, making short work of filleting the fish. We then looked up a Thursday Island Nummus(pickled fish) recipe which Karen managed to scrounge all the ingredients for and whip up. This would be tasty to eat in a day or 2. Although I’ve read that pickled fish can be kept for up to 4-6 weeks so maybe we’ll keep it till the end of the trip and do some rounds of a fear factor eating challenge.

The rest of the day was spent motoring towards Broome. We were to arrive in the evening and hopefully have no problems finding our mooring in the dark at Cable Beach.

Tune in next time to find out.

Jess :)