STINKER: Helping a visitor take the bait

FISHING for bream off the rocks at Corlette, Bill had four broad-shouldered, bright-eyed fish in the creel.

A visitor to the Port who was fishing a few metres away and couldn’t get a bite. He became increasingly frustrated.

As Bill battled his next bream, it all got too much.

“Mate, what bait are you using?” quizzed the visitor.

“Mullet, fresh mullet cut into cubes,” answered the champ.

“I’m using mullet and I can’t get a touch. You must be doing something special,” the visitor replied, wandering over to inspect Bill’s bait.

“Do you mind if I have a look at your bait?”

Bill held out his plastic bag half full of neatly cut fresh mullet strips.

“Ah ha! now I see, you’ve covered the mullet with a secret fish attractor,” the visitor said.

Bill was as surprised as the excited fisherman. Staring into the bag, he realised the source of the visitor’s discovery. The mullet was coated with sesame seeds! In his hurry to go fishing, Bill grabbed the first bag he could find, which just happened to be one that had contained sesame buns from the supermarket.

Always the joker, Bill realised that he had caught more than the bream.

“Don’t tell anyone, mate, but they are sesame seeds. Bream go crackers over them,” Bill said.

Well, the visitor hit the ground running.

“Watch my gear mate, I’m off to Coles,” he said.

The yarn reminded Bill of another incident that occurred on a small beach at Stockton when a fellow fisherman, around 10 metres away, started to berley with a bag of wheat.

Whoosh! A handful of wheat showered the surface, followed by another, and another.

“Excuse me, mate, are you after bream or chooks?” Bill asked.

The wheat man failed to see the humour, and for a while it looked like there could be a blue. Every bream that Bill caught that day was cross-eyed and full of wheat.

Bill taught me heaps about fishing for jewfish. His knowledge amazed me: I couldn’t wait to sit with him and ask the hundreds of questions that needed asking.

“One night we caught 19 jewfish, all around 50lb. The boat was barely out of the water as we motored back towards the entrance to the Hunter River. A couple of kilometres from the river mouth, the boat began to take water and it seemed that we would need to toss a few big fish over the side.”

Being a lateral thinker, Bill had another idea as he motored the struggling boat into the shadow of a huge Japanese tanker anchored off Newcastle, waiting for a load of coal.

Grabbing the anchor, Bill began banging on the steel hull of the ship. On the still night, you could hear the hollow Bong! in Newcastle.

It didn’t take long for a few of the excited crew to gather and stare down over the handrail.

With no knowledge of Japanese Bill still managed to get his message across: “Send down the money and I will send up the fish.”

Over the side came a rope tied to a large basket with a considerable amount of yen. Bill filled the basket, eager to keep his boat afloat.

This continued until Bill had a big pile of Japanese money and only two fish left.

Home he motored, much higher in the water, wondering just how much his night had earned him.

When it was all sorted out and the conversion calculated Bill had sold his fish for around $2 each.