G'day Mates!: Catch of the day!

For Brian's Christmas pressie I got him a chartered fishing trip out in Port Phillip Bay! He invited me along too :) We had it booked for early January but they texted me the night before cancelling it due to extreme weather! The weather forecast looked fine to me so I was very upset and thought they were being a bit dramatic. The next evening on the news after hearing "boat capsized on the bay due to strong northerly winds, 2 men stranded in the water for 4 hours" I realized these guys know what they are talking about and if they need to cancel our trip to prevent me from having a titanic moment that is fine!!!!!

Did I mention we live only a few minutes from the beach! It is so great, although, we have not been out there near enough this summer!

We had to wake up at 3:30 AM and get to the pier at 4:30 so we could leave at 5!!! Ridiculously early. ~~The best part of~~ The only good part of being up that early is getting to see the beautiful sunrise! I haven't seen the sun RISE in ages!

We cruised for about an hour before we stopped to start fishing (this is a pretty massive bay). The water was SOOO calm which is good-- no seasickness from me!! At the first stop it was pretty slow and the only keeper fish was MINE! :)

I asked Brian over and over how you know when you have actually caught something rather than just the waves making it feel like a little tug on your line (I'm obviously no expert!) Finally, I felt this huge pull on the line and knew this had to be a fish! I was reeling as fast and as hard as I could making all sorts of struggle noises, the boat crew was over there to assist me just in case I pulled in something like a shark! At this point everyone on the boat was looking my way to see what kind of massive fish I was about to pull up. When the fish finally came to surface it was just this medium sized skinny little guy-- I was pretty disappointed. The crew was ecstatic because the fish I caught was a flathead-- a very desirable fish that prices at about $50/kilo. All I know was this little bugger REALLY didn't want to be caught and was swimming as hard as he could to get off my line-- even tangling me up with others lines- and although he wasn't too big he was soo hard to pull up that I really thought I could have caught a shark. Which, now that I think about it, THANK GOD I didn't YIKES!

For the next few hours we pulled up tons of "pinkys" -- baby snappers. We didn't go at the best part of the year for the BIG catches but we knew that going in and I thought it was so much fun to pull in all these little pinkys! Brian caught one that we could keep, as most were way too small. For about 30 minutes we were non stop catching fish! I would catch one on my line and Brian would help me get it off and re-bait it and while I was holding his pole I would catch another on his! It was really so much fun!

We got a little sausage sizzle on the boat (I swear, sausage sizzle = Australia, to me!) Then after a few hours headed back to Melbourne. At the end of the trip between Brian and I we had two fish to take home. We were satisfied with that-- most people had none. They did a little pool where if you were interested you could put in $5 for the biggest catch of the day.... and guess who won???? ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I even got this spectacular little trophy, which I immediately found a home for on one of our bookshelves for all the world (or our house guests) to see!

It was a beautiful day in Melbourne so took a few more pictures as we rode into St Kilda pier.

MERRY CHRISTMAS BRIAN :)

That evening we cooked up our fishys! I was pretty excited about the flat head because a few people I talked to that day said it was their most favorite fish and I had never even tried it! I couldn't decide how to cook it so Brian grilled 2 fillets and I pan fried 2 fillets (did you know the pronounce the T in fillet here-- it sounds funny to me!) DINNER WAS DELISH! Grilled AND pan fried fish, brown rice with fresh tomatoes and stuffed jalapenos from our garden! YUMMY YUM YUM! Not that you asked, but I do think that Brian's grilled fish were a bit better :)