Fishing on the Gulf (Nicholas)

On the east side of the Gulf of Carpentaria is a town called Karumba which lies on the banks of the Norman River. Lots of people go here and to other places around the gulf to fish for the dry season and stock up their fridges with salmon and barramundi. Hence this place has many fishing charters and basically lives on the fish they get out of the Gulf. Today Ryan, Dad and I went on one of these charters because Ryan and Dad love fishing and were determined to catch some fish before we leave the Gulf!

Out on the water Dad, Ryan and I geared up with fishing rods, gang hooks and bait, cast out and hoped for the best. Five or so minutes later after one failed attempt at hooking a fish I came up with the first fish of the afternoon, which was closely followed by dad’s first and a while later Ryan’s first. Ryan then went on to catch another two before we changed locations. The next place we were at resulted in some almost instant success with every one catching at least one fish as a school of fish came through. A few minutes after that school of fish was another which hung around for a bit allowing us to catch the rest of the fish we needed to fill our supply which meant that the rest of the fish we caught were going back in the water. Dad caught most of the rest of the fish which included a Queen fish that we kept and two cat fish that never came into the boat because they can sting you with spikes located around the head.

That night we gutted and filleted all of the twelve fish that was our share of the catch. I was gutting them and dad was filleting them while Ryan was holding the light for us. Unfortunately fish are covered in slime and now my hands have a layer of slime on them that I can’t get off and to make it worse the smell from them is incredibly pungent!