To Broome and Back!: Day 71. Fishing and Whale Watching. 21/07/2015

Another 5 a.m. start for John. Cousin Keith organised a fishing trip with his friend Terry to head out for the day in Terry’s 21ft Cat “Endless Summer”. What an adventure.

Terry lives in Broome and Keith has been his first mate/able assistant for the last 7 years and they have built up an amazing friendship. Terry is avery capable captain and has all the navigation and fish location gear on board to ensure a very safe and successful day. Keith was outstanding. Obviously his boating days at Rosebud gave him a good background to be a deckhand and with further training by Terry he worked tirelessly keeping baits up. untangling the odd lines and keeping the decks spotless. And he caught some fish too.

A successful day it was. So many fish of different species landed, some released, others used as bait for the bigger ones. 5 really good snapper where landed over the course of the day and a few empty stubby bottles into the rubbish bin.

The sea in the afternoon settles down to a millpond that made John feel a lot better. The early morning was quite choppy and John was positive in his attitude always watching the horizon when he wasn’t catching fish.

As the day wore on sailing fish were flying out of the water, sea snakes weaved by the boat and whales were appearing out of nowhere slashing their fins on the water or breaching up showing their prowess to the watching cows. Quite a display. At this time of the year whales are still migrating North to calf, then mate and later in the year return South with their newborn. Our other fisherman on board announced that he had counted in excess of 30 whales during the day but this was put down to alcoholic influence. We would have seen up to twenty.

Around 3pm. Terry suggested they head back to shore and John was very happy as the heat from the sun was becoming quite oppressive. Terry has a tractor located close to the boat ramp and retrieving the boat was a breeze. Both John and Peter sat in the boat until it was on the sand and didn’t get their feet wet!

A wonderful day on the water.

We all went to the Mangrove Resort for a final dinner together before Rod, Jude, Don and Heather depart for the journey South. We still have another 5 days in Broome and have a number of items on our bucket list to do.