jayneandmarty.com

Yesterday when launching the boat I cut my hand on the boat trailer. Not too deep a cut, but fairly nasty. When we returned (fishless), Jayne thought it would be a good idea to get a tetanus booster. She couldn’t remember what tetanus does to you but she knew it wasn’t good, and my last shot was 20 years ago.

So off I went to the surgery on High Street Belmont, trying to save some money by going to the bulk-billing place instead of the surgery closer to us in Highton Village. Surprisingly I was seen in less than 15 minutes. That’s the only good thing you’ll read here about the High Street Belmont surgery.

The "doctor", if that’s what she was, asked me what I was there for, so I showed her the cut and explained that I needed a tetanus shot. I also explained that when I had my last shot in my early teens I had a reaction to it (my arm became inflamed and felt searingly hot when touched). Immediately she stopped me mid-sentence and told me she couldn’t treat me because of the potential for another reaction.

Momentarily thrown off-guard by this, but nevertheless trusting of her opinion thus far, I asked about tetanus, i.e. if I can’t have a booster, what might tetanus do to me.

She replied, "I haven’t got time to explain tetanus to you. If you want to know about it, look it up on the internet."

I copped that one on the chin too, bit my tongue and decided to give her one last chance, so I asked her what my options were.

She said nobody will treat me, wrote down the words "Immunisation Registry" on a scrap of paper, told me to get the number off reception, and call them.

Unbelievable.

So I walked out, went to the surgery I should have gone to in the first place in Highton, and had a discussion with a real doctor. We decided that the risk of contracting tetanus if I didn’t have the shot was very very low, but that posed a greater threat to me than having the shot and possibly suffering another reaction. So I had the shot. There’s been no reaction so far.

Never again will I go to a bulk-billing surgery.

At the weekend our neighbour told me the reason Matt and I didn’t catch any fish the other week is because they’re all out in the open ocean. Something to do with water temperatures. "Give it another few weeks", he said, "and you’ll be right.".

With that in mind, and given that I was bored today (off work sick), I’ve done some research and hereby present the fruits of my labours. I will follow this knowledge over spring, summer and autumn. Will I catch any fish? I doubt it, but I’ll try.

First of all, I had to have some sort of idea about type of fish I intend to catch, which in turn is mostly governed by where I’m going to fish.

Saltwater

Every now and again I’ll head out in the ski boat with Matt  to Corio Bay and the Outer Harbour. According to fishvictoria.com, there we can expect to catch snapper, flathead, and whiting.

Futurefish.com.au reckons good all-round tackle for those fish off a boat is a 2m snapper rod with 4-6kg line on a threadline or baitcaster reel and suicide or long shank 2 to 6/0 hooks.

Flathead are found on the bottom close to shore or at a drop-off and they are often caught on pilchards, pippies or squid. Drifting in the boat works well and the best rigs are simple round or barrel running sinkers that let the bait move along the seabed.

Snapper are a midwater fish, so a paternoster rig often works well (where the sinker sits on the bottom and the bait is 1-2m above it). They love pilchards, squid and flathead pieces and swim around over reefs rather than weed beds or sand. Berley helps attract them to an area and the best times are early evening and early morning on a tide change.

A snapper, yesterday

Whiting prefer weeds and sand. (A futurefish hot tip tip is to anchor your boat over the weeds and cast to the sand.) They also like their squid and pippies, mussels also work well. Early morning and evening is best and they like a bit of berley.

Freshwater

When I grew up in England I used to love freshwater fishing. In my early teens I’d often load my (ridiculous amount of) gear onto my racing bike and ride the five miles or so to Sonning for chub, barbel, bream and perch, or to the BBC lake to try for a tench.

Imagine my disappointment, then, that here in Australia, in our big brown sunburnt land of high fish stocks, I’ve only caught one freshwater fish - a carp. The carp took a worm on a tributary of the Edward river near Deniliquin, and would have been a highly prized catch in the UK: it was about 60cm long and weighed about 3kg. In Australia it’s against the law to release carp, so that worm was its last. Jayne had to kill it. The pathetic knock on the head that I gave it only stunned it and I couldn’t bring myself to finish the job off. I was brought up releasing everything in the UK.

Anyway. Every now and again I’ll have the opportunity to try for trout in the Eildon pondage, the Mt Beauty pondage or the Goulburn River, and maybe yellowbelly and redfin (perch) at Lake Mulwala or Lake Eildon.

The crafty troutses likes their yabbies, wormses and mudeyes (little creepy-crawlies), and they’ll also take a lure, yes, they will. Use size 4-8 baitholder hooks, light gear (2kg line) and go early morning or late evening.

A fat rainbow trout

If baitfishing a lake or pond for trout, a running sinker rig that allows the bait to sit on the bottom works well. For running water you might not need a sinker if you put enough worms on, and if you see surface activity try a mudeye about 50-100cm under a bubble float. If lurefishing, Fishnet reckons you can’t go past a Tassie Devil trolled behind a boat.

The Tassie Devil

Yellowbelly gobble up yabbies, worms and shrimp and might also go for a deep-diving lure. Stick a baitholder hook on in size 4 to 1/0 and fish around structure early morning and evening. There’s a nice story about fishing around Mulwala for yellowbelly here.

Redfin (English perch) are similar to yellowbelly but smaller, so use lighter gear.

A redfin

Summary

A 1.8-2.0m spin rod with a fairly light threadline reel should handle all that. Then I need two sets of gear: for saltwater I’ll load a spool with 100m of 6kg line and take out decent sinkers and a bunch of 4/0 hooks. For freshwater I’ll load a second spool wth 2kg line and have a lighter set of sinkers and some size 6 hooks, except if I’m going for yellowbelly, when I’ll use the saltwater gear.

Should cost me about $100.

Please please please let me catch you, o fishies.

Oh … I almost forgot. I called this post "Jayne and Marty’s fishing tips". Those tips you just read are all mine (well, I collated them anyway). Jayne’s fishing tip is simple. Buy a $4 handline, borrow a hook, get Marty to put a worm on and you’re all set.

Jayne decided to cook curried sausages and mash tonight, which we’ve done before, but usually from one of those Continental packets. We had no such packet tonight so Jayne thought she’d make it up. Our kitchen’s stocked with all sorts of powders, sauces and such, and all was going well until she noticed a strange smell emanating from the wok. Not unpleasant, necessarily, but certainly strange.

We looked at it.

Looked innocent enough. Curious, she tasted it.

Suffice to say that there’s a reason why turmeric is turmeric and curry powder is curry powder. Yes, although they’re both very yellow, and in our kitchen they’re stored in very similar little jars, they most certainly are very different things.

When we’d stopped laughing, we tried to save the sausages, carrots and onions by putting them in the colander, washing them, then trying again (with curry powder this time). All seemed to be going well, again, until Jayne tasted it, again.

Without telling me she’d tasted it she convinced me to. Never have I tasted anything as weird as turmeric sausages, except perhaps washed turmeric and curry powder sausages. I hope I never have to taste either again.

When we stopped laughing for the second time we cooked cheese on toast.

Stumbled across this website just now when googling "wandana heights" … The National Public Toilet Map.

http://www.toiletmap.gov.au/browse.aspx?type=area&id=8c1f9b06-82c7-44a2-96da-e85496e7ef54

It’s part of the National Continence Management Strategy, which, of course, you knew existed.

When I saw the link to "suggest a toilet" my eyes lit up. I immediately saw an opportunity to suggest one somewhere, get it built, and forever have it known as Jayne & Marty’s toilet.

Alas - Suggest a Toilet is simply a way of notifying the site editor that they’re missing an existing toilet on the site.

Foiled.

(P.S. The red dot is our house)

‘Twas a fine sunny Saturday today so after our morning beach walk with Max we hit the garden.

Part of our backyard is (was) a bit overgrown - it looks nice enough, in a rambling, natural sort of a way, but we’d like to extend our decking out a bit and have a view of the lawn down the back. So we pulled some plants out: an ugly thing, a weird makeshift archway with an out-of-control banksia rose on it, and ivy. Lots and lots of ivy. Jayne spent about an hour pulling the ivy out from between the rocks in a retaining wall and there’s still heaps to go.

Tomorrow Jayne’ll finish the ivy, attack the snakepit, pull out another couple of bushes, and tidy everything up. I won’t be helping her because I’ll be going back and forth to the tip all day. We have three trailer-loads so far and there’ll be more tomorrow.

We’re loving having a big garden to play with. It’s therapeutic, satisfying, and tiring.

Max took this one for us.

Here’s Jayne showing the ivy who’s boss.

And here’s the remains of the ugly bush showing me who’s boss.

More tomorrow.