Tim Barrels

Whether you are a fishing greenhorn or an old pro, there is always something new to learn, isn’t there? Here I have some tips and advice for you to make your fishing tours more comfortable and your fishing experience safer and more enjoyable. Some of these you might already be following, but I am pretty sure not all of them. Just make a note of all of them and your chances of going wrong on a trip minimises.

Deep sea fishing refers to the fishing technique in which you… well; actually go deep underwater to catch fish. The name tells the whole story. As can be imagined, a technique like this would (and does) require a lot more equipment than other forms of fishing. So get ready to get more line, rods, lures, reels, baits and large fishing tackles. The boats you would require for angling will also need to be specially designed ones.

When marine biologist and early conservationist Dr. Charles Frederick Holder invented a new sport, in fact a new form of fishing, in 1898, I am pretty sure he had no idea he was going to change the way recreational fishing was seen forever. The new form of fishing was big game fishing and Dr. Holder went on to publish many articles and books on the subject, noted for their combination of accurate scientific detail with exciting narratives.

Tell me if you understand the following statement: “any of several large edible Australian fishes, esp. the percoid species Lates calcarifer (family Centropomidae) of NE coastal waters or the freshwater species Scleropages leichardti (family Osteoglossidae) of Queensland.” Could you make head or tail of that? Now let me tell you what was being talked about. The statement quoted above is the definition in the Collins Discovery Encyclopaedia for the fish we humans know as… the barramundi!

For me the word “fishing” always conjured up an illustration from a book I read when I was a kid. The image showed a young boy – not much more than 11 – lying on the bank of a river, under a tree. He was dressed in suspenders and had a straw hat on his head. He had a reel in his hand and the line was cast while the boy serenely waited for a fish to bite. The tranquillity on the boy’s face had a calming influence on me even then: the book was Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”.