Yabbies!

Not getting wet (at least from the chin up) represented a little bit of a challenge at the beach, so we decided on one trip to the sandbank that we'd try our luck catching some bait, in the form of marine yabbies. Eli hadn't seen or used the yabby pump before, so off we headed on a new adventure. Our first stop, where we were closely watched by a pelican and a lot of cormorants, didn't yield any yabbies, so we decided to head to our normal section of the sandbank and do some pumping in 'stingray alley', which is a favourite spot of Eli's for running and splashing around like a maniac. It wasn't long before we starting getting yabbies and Eli was an excellent retriever, often diving onto the unsuspecting yabbies and giving them no chance to escape. He was incredibly good at picking them up and not getting pinched by their over-sized claw and we formed quite a good team, with me pumping and Eli catching the yabbies.






Here's team 'yabby' (Eli and I), at stingray alley - now our favourite spot for yabby pumping too.

Eli was so taken with the yabbies that he just couldn't stop picking them up - here he is holding one in the boat on the trip back to the beach house!

 

He kept playing once we got back to the jetty too and even developed a new game, which involved selecting the yabby with the biggest claw and, holding it carefully, he'd go 'fishing' - effectively using the claw to catch another yabby in the bucket. 

He thought this was an excellent game despite my warnings that he'd get pinched before long...needless to say, I was right. Given how he screamed at the time you would have thought that that experience would been enough to put an end to the game, but like a moth to a flame (or a boy to a yabby!), he started playing his game again once the pain in his finger had subsided. Of course he got pinched again - and in the end I had to separate him from his yabby friends... 

Although Grandad used some of the yabbies as bait for fishing, and with some success, Eli decided to release most of them into the canal...so now I guess we have to watch our toes whilst swimming!