Max Hall and Mike Gray are ready to go.
The Old Masters Some fishing masters are either born, or get away from it all, on Great Oyster Bay. Hilary Burden meets three of Swansea’s legendary ‘ancient mariners’
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hat old people don’t know, those who’ve lived 80 summers or more. You wonder about a sixth sense. But famed 20th century Tasmanian-born ‘prince of navigators’ Harold Gatty, would have none of that. He reckoned some people, especially those born before modern methods of navigation, are just better at tuning into the natural things happening around them. In his classic book Finding Your Way Without A Map or Compass, Gatty called it “natural navigation”. The kind of navigation you won’t find in a textbook, it’s the ability to observe, to see little things that may seem trivial. A keen sense of observation in the outside world adds up, improving with age – like vintage wine. Great Oyster Bay offers shelter and protection of the maritime kind, nestled between the pink granite cliffs of Freycinet and Schouten Island, and the east coast’s frequently placid coves, beaches and bays that run down to Little Swanport, with Nine Mile Beach connecting the two sides at the Swan River mouth.
The whole bay – roughly 20 kms in all directions, to a depth of 13m – is sand, long known for being one of the best places to fish for flathead; and the Swan River, for bream. Swansea’s ancient mariners sit and watch the weather on the water from their front rooms. ax Hall, 88 in August, has a view of the whole bay – 50 kms south to Maria and about the same north to Bicheno. While his livelihood was formerly made on the roads, running the east coast freight then bus services, he knows the trip across the bay from Swansea to Schouten to Coles Bay and back is a triangle, roughly equi-distant. With that, you can tell the size of the bay, and where you are in it. Max moved here with his Swansea born wife, Helen (née Cook), in the 1950s. He says you’re a pretty poor fisher if you can’t go out and get a feed of flathead from the bay. He remembers fishing for cray on the reef with Helen’s father, when the crays had coral on their backs. If he’s on his own Max goes out in a smaller boat from the Swansea boat ramp, or else he’s in the Expo. Mainly in the morning when it’s calm enough and warm enough, never in an easterly. He
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knows the weather by heart. “You don’t get many in the afternoons, not when it’s blowing because you are moving too fast and you can’t keep your line on the bottom. In summertime you get the nor’easters after lunch, so it’s not much chop.” You won’t find him checking his mobile for the weather. Instead, Max takes his cue from the old weather glass he won playing footie for Swansea. Best and fairest. If it sits on 30 or above, it’s pretty fine. “If the glass drops back, she’s coming off the land, so watch out! Off the land is a westerly, and they’re blowing out to sea, and if you miss Schouten Island you’re buggered! Next stop is New Zealand. We learned the hard way. If you made a blue you had to put up with it. Most people who look at Willy Weather don’t learn for themselves.” Round the back of Schouten Island there are some beautiful fish, he says. “But it’s hard to get ‘round there when there’s no roll or slop, or no wind. You don’t get many chances at doing that.” He catches them on a bit of meat or chop, or he’ll use squid cut up into little squares. He’ll have a hook on one end, then a sinker, then a lure, then another hook, “so when they get there, they think it’s a smorgasboard”.
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Fishing News - Page 7
