Fish On!

Jarrod had an awesome day fishing yesterday.  He was invited to go out with Mark and Peter, co-owners of a well loved 5.45 meter Streaker fishing boat.  As mentioned in the last blog entry they left early in the morning.  (This weeds out the truly dedicated from the wussies.)  They launched from Sorrento and headed to, as we would say back home, "No Tellum Creek".  Jarrod's arms were feeling the strain by the time he got back but he had lots of great stories to tell, along with a horrible case of the Fishing Pox.  Unfortunately we haven't figured out yet how to get the pictures off his phone (he forgot the camera!) so we had to settle for taking pics of the fish he kept, along with a couple downloaded from the Internet for illustration.  In total Jarrod caught 5 squid, 1 swell shark and 2 skate rays.

The swell shark was about 30 inches long.  They have razor-sharp teeth like a Ginsu knife.  Swells are not rumored to taste very good so Jarrod threw him back.  Plus the boat runs a 'Thrill Before Kill' policy, meaning they would rather enjoy the fishing than the keeping unless the fish is going to make it to the dinner plate.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swellshark 

Skate rays are a sandy colored manta ray.  The largest one Jarrod caught was so big they could not lift it into the boat.  It took 25 minutes of intense, full blast effort to reel him in.  It probably weighed around 70 pounds and looked like this ray at the right:

The squid were the catch of the day.  Two were cut up to use as bait for gummy shark, plus one was given to the boat owner, and two came home.  We're going to eat them for dinner tonight along with a couple flatheads Peter gave us to try.  Even though it wouldn't seem like a squid could fight very hard it was unreal how much effort it took to reel them in.  Plus once they made it to the side of the boat the ink-squirting began.  The entire boat got sprayed, the fishermen got sprayed, and the fish bucket was still dripping with black ink.  Ugh.

Great job Jarrod!