Bait boy and the great fishing adventure!

On the morning of Grandad's birthday (January 4), we decided to try our hand at fishing. Eli has always been interested in catching fish (I blogged about it last summer) and he was pretty excited as we headed out in the boat towards North Shore.

It turns out that his excitement was well justified, because we got some big bites as soon as we cast in our two lines. In fact, Eli and I reeled in his line and found, to our surprise, that we'd caught a shovel-nosed ray (Aptychotrema rostrata). He (Eli, not the ray) was ecstatic - as you can tell from the look on his face in the second photo. I actually really like that photo, because Eli looks like a big game hunter, posing next to his latest prize.



Amid all of the commotion, we pulled in the other line (and another shovel-nosed ray) - two fish from two casts is a pretty good way to start a fishing trip! After taking our photos, we released our rays back into the water...




The bites were still coming and Grandad and I were losing a bit of bait (presumably to more shovel-nosed rays!), so Eli took on the role of 'Bait Boy' - he'd run between us with prawns for our hooks and aside from the occassional dropped prawn (and later a few that he wickedly threw into the water!) he kept us going with his supply of bait.

Just as we were about to leave North Shore, I pulled in a small whiting (Sillago ciliata), which Eli enjoyed holding and releasing.



As the tide was coming in pretty fast, we decided to leave North Shore and head to a quieter spot on the river for some boat fishing.



Before long we were getting some pretty good bites again and Eli started winding his line in. After struggling a little, he asked me to help and before we knew it, he'd landed his first ever yellow fin bream (Acanthopagrus australis). We landed a few more bream, like the one I'm holding here...but as you can see from the photo, Eli was starting to lose interest and we were all ready to head home for some breakfast, so we pulled up our anchor and headed for the beach house.



We landed a few more bream and a moses perch (Lutjanus russelli) in the canal - what a fantastic fishing adventure. Based on this experience Eli will certainly be keen for more fishing action down the track - I just hope that he's a good luck charm and that our success (with bites and catches) continues...