G’day fishos. It would seem that a lot of us are heading out in our boats a little unprepared.
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Tim Peverill from NSW Waterways and a couple of the other officers hit the water pretty heavily over the Melbourne Cup long weekend.
They focused their attention on Mulwala, the Murray and on Lake Hume.
They were amazed at how many people they caught doing the wrong thing or just unprepared for a day on the water.
They put it down to the fact that, with it being a long weekend, it was the first time out for the season for a lot of people.
They expected another patrol to show better preparation from our fishos.
But, after another weekend of patrols and people breaking basic regulations, he gave me a buzz to see if we could highlight the issue.
These blokes don’t like pinching people.
They much prefer to educate everyone, but if you’re not wearing life jackets when you’re supposed to, haven’t got your safety gear on you, haven’t checked dates on your life jackets, haven’t got a licence or rego etc, you’re going have your day spoilt and you’re gonna to lose some money.
Do yourself a favour, brush up on the regs and what gear you have to carry.
Who knows, that might even save someone’s life, and it could be yours.
These blokes don’t like pinching people ... but if you’re not wearing life jackets when you’re supposed to, haven’t got your safety gear on you ... you’re going have your day spoilt.
At A Glance
Khancoban – we’ve just gotta start with Khancoban because there was a 24lb, yes 24lb or roughly 10kg brown trout caught there this week.
Recent Khancoban local, Cale Browne was the lucky fisho!
When I say lucky there is often some luck involved in catching a fish of this size.
But when you’re fly fishing by yourself at 4.30am with a five weight rod, a 6lb leader and you hook a 24lb trout, fight it for an hour and have to land this monster by hand because you’re net is way too small, there’s a lot of patience and skill involved as well.
Cale also tied the fly he used to catch this whopper himself.
I’m not into the record books too much but I think it would be safe to say it has to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest trout caught on mainland Australia!
Cale never had a camera or phone on him so photos were all taken after he left the water and in daylight.
Of course there’ll be the odd person out there saying “he should have let it go” but you should just consider a couple of things.
A trout of that size is right at the end of its life and after a one hour battle would have been very lucky to survive.
A fish this size in Australia only comes along one in every million lifetimes and if Cale hadn’t kept it, who’d have believed a story like that anyway!
Congratulations Cale, you’ve lived the fisho’s dream!