Day 23 – Sun, 1 Aug at Karumba Point

Today was a day to check out Karumba Point and, well mainly to go fishing – yeah you read that correctly, I went fishing. Well I felt that you could not come all this way to the Gulf and not go fishing. That is the reason for this place -  well it is also a port for the area but hey all the tourists come and spend weeks in their caravans simply to fish.

So I had booked myself in on an afternoon fishing charter departing at 12 noon for 5 hours. So the morning was mine. I had the usual breakfast, cereal and tea, spoke to a couple of people – well you can’t just say hello all the time, there must be something else to talk about.

In this place the topic is fishing, how it has been the past few days (always teaming with fish), what the tides are doing, the wind is too strong today (you won’t catch any today), and so forth. I was obviously all very knowledgeable on the topic after the first guy so I could really get into the swing.

I also found that this is the Gulf port. Some Chinese mining company ships predominantly zinc (some lead) out of here. It is mined some 350km away where it is crushed to a fine powder, then mixed with water and pumped by pipeline to Karumba. Here the process is reversed with most of the water extracted (leaving about 4%) and basically leaving pellets. The pellets are then loaded onto a 5,000 tonne barge and this is then transported to a mother ship anchored about 15km out in the Gulf. Oh forgot to mention the Gulf is really shallow 2-5m for a heck of an area.

Anyway, enough of that so I had a 1km walk to the water so I left early and took in the local market at the pub right on waterside, had a cold soft drink and took in the sights. I walked up to the boat ramp and waited for the pickup.

The morning charter arrived back and things were not looking good – they caught nothing all morning – not even a bite. So much for my fishing I thought.

We headed out a few km and dropped anchor in about 3m of water and we moved a couple of times throughout the afternoon. There were 5 on this charter and we all got stuck into it. We had a really enjoyable afternoon.

I personally caught a fabulous blue salmon, 2 large bream, 4-5 undersized bream and about 7 sharks.  Hey how is that for your first fishing charter. Others caught a few bream and lots of undersized bream, catfish, and sharks. It was really fun, better then the cold I usually catch.

On return to camp my neighbours Michel & Donna, whom I shared dinner with last night, and who also had been on the morning charter, were waiting and the great white hunter had returned with a feed for the settlement. So Michael and I cleaned the fish, and we sat down to a fabulous meal – all the better since I had actually caught it.

So I am content tonight that I have achieved my goal for this part of the trip – to catch a bl…y fish! Yeah that there is my salmon!