What crazy/silly things you did.......

[Robbo76]

fishing as a teenager or even now. I was talking to a mate about this last night, just thought there would have to be some stories floating around. Thought it would be interesting to hear some.

When I was younger a mate and myself used to fish in the barron river/thomatis creek in a 2 man canoe. (You Cairns boys would know this system) We did this a lot till one day we saw a very large saltie about 5 meters away from us just watching. I think we would have made the olympic rowing team for sure, absolute scary stuff. Not only that, we used to hop out onto a mud bank in the thomatis creek section to cast net for bait, while one just hung around in the canoe.

Another time was when camping at the Annon river near Cooktown. We had an 8 foot rubber ducky with a 4hp i think it was or maybe a 2hp?, myself and a mate went for a fish at night up the river. On the way back we hit a mud bank and were stuck, soooo, I decided to jump out and push. Old mate shone the tourch behind me and there was a saltie following/walking behind me, tail curled up and standing tall on 4 legs. When I could breath and unfreeze myself, I jumped in the little crappy boat started it in the mud and tapped it out, all 4 ponies. Got to ramp and we did not fish out of that ducky again.

Pretty silly stuff back then....I could never do any of that rubbish now. I guess I should only hear from the "teenage years", cause we are all responsible now, right........?;D

Rob

[PNG1M]

Probably would have been even more crocs around in those days than now..!?

[Scalem]

Somehow the boat seemed very sluggish and we suspected the spline rubber was slipping, as it seemed very slow to get on the plane. We got the spanners out to change over to the spare prop, then realised there was probably nothing wrong with it. The girl friend ( now wife of 26 years that is how long ago this was) is still sitting in the boat which is sitting on the beach where we were doing the repair when she hails out " why is the esky now floating down the back of the boat, and what is all this water??:oops: Everyone has forgot the bungs at least once, but we were all the way out the middle of tiger mullet from rudy maas before we realised.

Scalem

[Sea-Dog]

This still gives me the willies whenever I think about it....



When I was 21 and working on scallop trawlers.

On our way back to port with a full load.

I'm on watch. The skipper and other deckie are below having a nap.

I'm sitting in the driving seat, with the radar in front of me. I'm reading a book.

I got hungry and decided to go and get the fixings for a sandwich.

Went out on deck to the deckbox (fridge) opened her up and got the bread and stuff.

I was just lowering the lid when I realised it had been a while since I looked at the radar.

I stepped to the side of the wheelhouse to have a look in front of the boat and froze....

Less than 50 metres dead in front was another trawler travelling on a 90 degree angle to our course coming from our port side.

He was shooting his nets - luckily...

He let go the brakes on his winches and shot forward.

The starboard arm of my trawler passed within about 15 Metres of his stern.

If he hadn't seen me, and let go his winches... (shudder)

My carelessness could have easily cost the lives of 4 or 5 people.

I learned a lot from that lesson in life...

[Chamelion]

Ran into a rock bar which catapulted my mate and I through the windscreen (snapping the complete alu framing from the hull) and onto the nose of the boat... I later found out the tide was a good 0.5m lower than 'usual'.

Not my teenage years, it only happened this year... :-(

[Feral]

The scene of my folly was the Brisbane river.
When I was 17or 18 (30 odd years ago) a mate and I used to row an 8 foot sabot from the ramp at the old van park at Aquarium passage down to the sunken wall on the out going tide, fish a couple of hours then row back on the incoming tide. Did it quite a few times one summer. At night, only light a kero lantern hanging from a stick shoved in a row lock.

I'm not kidding when I say we would have been lucky to have 100mm of freeboard. If a seagull paddled past we had to put the nose of the boat in to the wake it produced.

In the same spot, last year in a 15 foot boat, we took a wave over the bow that was solely from the wind against tide affect. I've also seen the same boat take a wave and nearly get swamped by the tangalooma flyer in shallow water not far away from the same spot.

All I can say is Davey Jones just plain didn't want us. How we got away with it I'll never know!

[smashed crabs]

Years ago when i worked on trawlers we had this new decky on board doing a tucker trip, he was very green and keen. Since this was his first night i just had to play a trick on him, so i waited for the skipper to go for his kip and then put my trick into action. Here was this green young fella as keen a mustard just eating from my hands, he had stars in his eyes listning to my tales of the briny anyway i handed him a flash light and some red cellophane off a bottle of blonk the skipper got from a raffle at the lucinda point hotel. He looked at me very puzzled and said> what's this for? I said> emergency indicator mate im about to turn the boat and the indicators arn't working so pop out there on the trawl arm and start flashing, well bugger me he jump into action climbed out onto the arm wrapped the cellophane over the torch and starting flashing, talk about piss myself i couldn't stop laughing. I laughed so much i woke the skipper , i got a clout over the ear and forced to scrub the engine room with a toothbrush but it was worth it.

[smashed crabs]

My missus ran my brand new Allison 195 that i had into a parked charter boat at lucinda;D she got the forward and reverse mixed up, she blame's me for it ;D


Also earlier that day when i put the boat in the drink, missus at the helm i shoved the boat of the trailer before she tried to start it.I forgot that i didnt hook the battery cables back up from when i cleaned em and she floated away, then me mobile phone rang, it was the missus asking for instructions to hook up the battery
I hope she reads this;D :-*

[PinHead]

30' sports cruiser..sitting in its berth..berth facing north south..reasonable westerly blowing..start the motors..untie the ropes..a bloody great gust came through and turned the boat 90 degrees in no time..luckily there was not another boat in the berth next door..I did find out one thing..a 30' boat does fit sideways across 2 berths without hitting either side. Luckily no damage was done. One thing I hated was berthing..bloody wind on the thing was a pain.

[Noelm]

I have a 'you had to be there" story, we were bringing and charter yacht back from the Whitsundays to Sydney, we had been going non stop untill Bundaberg, doing 4 hour "shifts" of two people, when we decided to stop over for the night at Burnett heads, we were all tied up and decided a bit of an afternoon nap would be good before we headed over to the club sort of thing at the marina, the other guys had been asleep for about 3 hours and it had got dark, my mate came out fom his cabin and saw that it was dark and thought up a good joke, he went to one of the other guys cabins, knocked on the door and said "your watch"
"OK" he yelled back, and came up with his beanie and track suit pants on, walked over to the wheel and started to check all the instruments, then he fully woke up and realised nothing as working and we were stopped, then saw us all laughing our heads off, dressed ready to go for dinner, don't think he has forgiven us yet!

[Jarrah Jack]

When I had my trailersailer many moons ago my mate decided to have a crap over the side. He hated being in the water and had never swum in his life. We were all down below partying when we heard this splash and funny gurgling and screaming. He had fallen overboard with his pants down into his own muck. It was hard to save him for the amount of laughing we were doing.

[mull dog]

Was fishing the baron up in cairns with two mates on a hired 12 ft tinnie. we'd had a few ales and i was on the bow attending to the call of nature. said mates decide to rock the boat as i'm doing this and we all end up in the drink with the tinnie full of water and sinking fast. sobered up quick smart let me tell you. were only about 15 meters from the bank so we swam quick as to it. assessed the situation for crocs before we went to try and recover the tinnie. managed to do that and mate also managed to find his wallet and phone on the bottom also, pure fluke in about 4 meters of water. motor wouldn't start obviously so we had to paddle all the way back to the boat ramp with half an oar. dodgy dave at the boat hire joint was none too impressed and ended up costing us a bit for him to fix the motor. certainly were young and dumb back then. come to think of it not much has changed::)

[Robbo76]

ahh, yes, ol dodgy dave. Motor was probably stuffed before you hired it mate. ::) I think he is gone now, I looked at a boat once in his yard. You couldn't stand in it cause the floor was that rotton, motor was tilted down into the dirt, cob webs all over it, trailer was absolutely rotton. What a joker!

Good stories guys.

Cheers,
Rob

[therapy]

When I was a young fella, primary school age, we used to drag net for bait along the waterfront at Sandgate/ Shorncliffe and also upstream of the Hornibrook bridge. Now there were definate advantages to being taller than other kid's but the disadvantage of this was always being the one on the deep end of the net. There I would be, up to my chin in the water and then you see the floats getting pulled underwater as something banged into the net and worked it's way round to the your end. Stand as still as you can, try not to piss yourself, and shuffle /walk as fast as possible back to the beach without looking scared!! Sounds easy, but if you've ever tried to hurry with a rope on your foot and 60 foot of net to drag, you'll know it's not.. Would not get on the deep end of a net these day's, just buy bait!!

Cheers......Terry..........

[BigE]

Not that many moons ago after a particularly good outing with a coupla nice feeds of fish & crab on board we returned to the ramp to find the friendly DPI guys doing creel surveys at the ramp. Being younger and full ignorant bliss we happily show our catch and answered the survey Q? with times date and locations. Well well well imagine my suprise when those productive little spots turned into Green Zones !!! WTF with out a doubt one of the dumber moves on my part but it will never happen again.
Hope the 40 they want to sack have A Wonderful Xmass and the next 60 on the list have a Happy New Year!

Merry Xmass Ho Ho Ho.

BigE

[spearking]

couple to list from my trawler days in the gulf ... changing shackels while harnessed to the end of the boom stay in cyclone swell off darwin, almost having my head crushed by 5 tonne net boards, actually falling overboard at 2am 40 nm offshore in full wet weather gear...... more recently sinking a ski boat in the brissie river (took me 2 years to rebuild) and flipping a runabout in the 6 ft surf off of south straddie (compete idiocy on my behalf and this scarrred the s#@t out of me) ...... always been a laxed carefactor in my life but I am getting softer with old age

[darrend65]

Had an old mate I used to go fishing with in the Noosa river years ago. One trip he was being an exceptional smart arse all day, and with him fishing close to the bow and not many hand holds to grab I walked to his side of the boat. It literally was like one of those cartoons, he looked at me for about two seconds and then slid straight into the briny. Although we looked for an hour or so we never found the rod or glasses. But the look on the face was worth it.

Never went fishing with him again, his Mrs banned it.

[castlemaine]

Thirty years ago (wow that went quick), a mate (later my best man and godfather to my my eldest) went crabbing at the junction of the Logan and Albert in his father's tinny.

I was working for DPI in those days.

We were picking up heaps of muddies but all just under or Jennies.

He kept harping on about how we couldn't go back to the girls (girlfriends ... now wives) without any success. My answer was "I can see tomorrow's paper, 'DPI Officer caught with under size crabs and mate's car and his father's boat confiscated!' ".

Anyway he convinced me to keep a crab just under.
Just as this crab hit the bottom of the bucket, two Fisheries officers turned up.

DPI Officer : "Got any fellas"

Me and Mate at the same time : Yes(me) / No (mate)

DPI Officer : "OK let's have a look. Looks a bit under and green. Here's my measure and it is 14.9cm so you've got a 1mm doubt. Well fellas it's a bit under and green"

Me: "what's green mean?"

DPI Officer: "It's not full" (pushing in the shell). Look guys I know you've been catching crabs all morning and doing the right thing mostly but don't let me catch you with another undersized crab.

Me and Mate : "Thank you, thank you, thank you, ...."

Headed home with more harping from my mate so we stopped off at the fisho at the Glenn Hotel to get some prawns and crabs.

As we had a feed with the girls we noticed that all the crabs, we bought, were less than 15cm with the end points broken off (hence the new regulations). They would have been at least 1-2cm under legal.

Anyway till this day we still have a laugh.

Best of all we're still good mates.

Cheers;D

PS ... and yes the girls knew they were bought and not caught.