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My ideal fishing mate
  |  First Published: July 2015



Old mate on fishing forums needed someone to go out off Double Island, and invited interested persons to get in touch.

He gave a very broad summary of what sort of interested person he was willing to put up with. I’m not sure of the issues that face forum fanatics with regard to anti-discrimination legislation, but I imagine you are not allowed to veto anyone based on their religion, sexuality, ethnicity or state of origin. If the last one is included it bloody well shouldn’t be.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what sort of human being I would allow on my boat and found it surprisingly easy to describe.

Firstly, that person must support the right footy teams. I reckon I could cope with a quick offshore trip with an AFL or soccer (yes, that’s right, not football… soccer!) supporter, but having a cockroach fan on board would test the number of life jackets on board, especially in the all important May to July period.

I would feel OK about a Force or Rebels fan on the deck, mainly because between those two teams there’s usually one win per weekend. Unless they play each other…

And I’m not worried if anyone’s a basketball, or volleyball fan, but would definitely be ok with a Firebird’s fan coming on board, or even a Firebird’s player. That’s creepy actually, sorry.

Smokers and drinkers would obviously be fine, otherwise none of the Dudds would ever make it over the gun whales. There’s something very relaxing about lighting up a durry while waiting for a lively to go off, but at my age I have learnt that it might be an oxygen alert that goes off rather than the Shimano ratchet, so the durries have had to be shelved.

But like I said, shipmates would be welcomed, as long as they stayed downwind. With Doughers, that downwind thing has a couple of other advantages as well.

Not being a drinker, it can be a bit frustrating watching someone else tie one on with cold beer after cold beer during a full day in a steaming hot jack hole in central Queensland. The Dudds seem to enjoy it, but it’s beyond my ken. I just end up with more gas than a Chinchilla waterhole.

It does have positives though, being a non-drinker. Watching someone recovering from that session at a Central Qld jack hole makes you feel relatively healthy and the first beer they have the next day it seems like they are not only in a jack hole, but they’re sucking on one as well. But a Dudd’s stamina is legendary, and in one of those developmental or evolutionary hurdles that would give David Attenborough a raging hubert, the time spent recovering from the last session is often spent developing the next one, which repeats itself ad nauseam until the end of the week. The final recovery is often done at the first day back at their work, so unfortunately I don’t get to watch that.

So I’m easy to please really: smoker/non smoker, drinker/non drinker, male/female/blues supporter... doesn’t matter much to me. The only thing I insist on is a bad fisher. I’d hate to have the help catching more than me. Why do you think I go fishing with the Dudds so often? They’re the only people I know that are worse than me with a fishing rod. And that might have something to do with their alcohol intake while they’re fishing with me. So what if I provide them with free beer? I get a fishing mate, they save money. It’s called a win/win!

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