This month I am going to be talking to you about marine life and the environment. The funny thing is, it is right at your own feet and all around us.

You don’t need a flash boat or 4WD to find it and too many people just don’t notice or appreciate it.

Last weekend our family spent a day fishing in Jervis Bay. It wasn’t a serious fishing trip but more a picnic, quality-time outing but we took some fishing gear along and spent some time trolling lures and then fishing for squid.

We tried two different spots on the north side of the bay for about an hour each and didn’t catch anything so we headed over to the other side and had a troll on the way.

We trolled a couple of Rapalas for half an hour but didn’t turn a reel so we just headed over towards Bowen Island and Murrays Beach. By this time the sun was well up and the water around Murrays was so clear it looked just fabulous.

Dad and I spend a lot of time in the boat and sometimes we don’t notice how nice things are when we’re trying to fish. Mum and my little sister do, though, and they commented about the water and all the small fish they could see and just how nice the whole place was. It is something we all take for granted at times, which is a shame.

We ended up seeing some friends of ours who were out in their boat and we all fished together and had some fun joking about who was catching the most or biggest squid.

My little sister, Rebecca, is nine and she had a great time fishing for squid and caught some beauties. Dad wanted to get a photo of her with the biggest ones but she was too scared to hold them. Bec is good at catching them but Dad or I have to grab them and put them in the fish box.

Mum also had a ball catching squid was so focused on fishing that she ended up getting sunburnt.

After we had about dozen squid we had lunch and just sat in the boat drifting around and enjoying the surroundings and talking about what a great day it had been. It was so nice we could have stayed there all day and kept fishing but we had to get back home.

So we headed over to some shallow water to clean the squid because this is a messy job. As we motored over into some shallow water we saw an enormous black stingray, so we pulled up and cleaned the squid there so we could feed it. We threw some of the squid wings in and the stingray came right over and just ate them all.

There were also some nice bream and whiting over the sand with some of the bream around a kilo. Nice fish! Rebecca and Mum thought it was great to see the stingray so close and that finished off a great family day on the water.

Andrew with a Jervis Bay squid. Sometimes it’s best just to soak in the surroundings.