IN July 2013, after a lot of saving and sacrifice, my partner Tom and I put our day jobs on hold to chase our dream. The dream? Spend a year travelling the East Coast of Australia fishing new locations and chasing all the iconic species we used to sit at our desks at work dreaming about.
The result was a year full of big fish, beautiful locations, meeting great new friends, a marriage proposal and a whole new attitude towards life of living in the moment and making the most of every opportunity. Here’s how it all began…
I’ve never been a big risk taker. Since I was a young girl I’ve found comfort in structure and have always had my life mapped out the way I wanted it. My partner Tom is very much the same. Building respectable careers, saving for a house and potentially a holiday somewhere down the track were always our priorities. So how did we end up putting all of this on hold to spend a dream year fishing and travelling around the country?
Social media has been both a blessing and a curse for anglers. Instant fishing reports are great for keeping you up to date with what’s happening, but there’s nothing worse than reading them whilst you’re stuck in an office knowing that it will be at least a few days or often longer until you can get your fishing fix. There was so much fishing we wanted to do, yet so little time to do it in. Working five days a week, coupled with family commitments and catching up with non-fishing friends meant that even if the weather was good on the weekend, we couldn’t always get out. We were frustrated and started thinking the ridiculous: What if we could “retire” for a year and just go fishing?
We started talking about what we would do if we could take some time off. We were only half serious, but we tossed around different destinations and different species that we’d love to target from our own boat. We joked that we would need a full year just to cover off on everything. Slowly though, the idea died and we instead came up with a big list of reasons why such a trip was unachievable and went back to the monotony of working 9-5.
A few months later a very dear family member was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. He was almost at retirement age and had dreams of spending the next twenty years making up for all the time he had missed fishing over the years due to work commitments. I was so angered by it – you work hard all your life in the hopes that you will be able to retire comfortably and just enjoy life. The reality is that some of us might not make it to retirement age, or be as able bodied as we want to be when we get there.
This cruel twist of fate made Tom and I look at our lives and re-think everything. We spoke about our dream year-long fishing trip and thought let’s stop talking about it and instead start planning it. Whilst it would take a lot of sacrifices to make it happen, we now had the motivation to “seize the moment”. We moved into Tom’s parents place and started saving like mad. We knew we would have to put our careers on hold if we were to do this for a whole year and the dream of owning our first home would have to wait. But we were young, able bodied and free of any significant financial commitments. If there was ever a time to do anything like this, it was now.
It begins
After a hard year of saving and many sacrifices we embarked on our trip of a lifetime, boat in tow. We had roughly mapped out the species we wanted to chase and where we wanted to chase them, yet we were careful to keep certain times of year flexible to be able to follow hot bites that we often seemed to miss when stuck at work. The general plan was to pick a location, book some accommodation for a week and then (weather and fishing dependent) would either move on or extend our stay. I won’t go into detail about every destination we visited, or you’d be reading this all day. But here’s some of the highlights:
Big Bluefin
Finishing work in late July, the trip started with a bang as we headed down the South Coast of NSW on the back of good reports of southern bluefin tuna. When we finally got a break in the weather, we headed wide off Ulladulla with good mate George Lirantzis with the hopes of landing our first ever bluefin. George didn’t disappoint and we caught bluefin until our arms and backs couldn’t take any more. The highlight was my 74kg fish on 24kg line, a female world record which I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
Warmer Climes
After our great day on the bluefin, the weather turned for the worse and we headed north chasing warmer weather. The freedom that I felt that day as we hit the Freeway was something I’ll never forget, we still had a whole year ahead of us and were going to make the most of every second of it.
The first few weeks were spent on the North Coast of NSW chasing snapper on soft plastics, one of our favourite forms of fishing. Having time on our hands meant we could explore so much more of the coastline than was normally possible on our usual three or four day visits to that part of the world.
Live aboard luxury
We had intended to stay longer on the North Coast, until we had a chance call from Little Audrey skipper Daniel Carlson asking if we would join him for a two week long live aboard trip from the Gold Coast to Cairns. Two weeks aboard 76 foot of luxury? How could we refuse?!
The weather was incredible for the first half of the journey, and it was to be a trip that we will remember for the rest of our lives. Great food, great company, the most magnificent boat and some fun fishing thrown in along the way. I can’t wait to get back up to the Great Barrier Reef in coming years with Dan and tick that big black marlin off the bucket list.
Magical Norfolk
Our time on Little Audrey was followed by some more time on the North Coast chasing snapper, kings and jewfish. The fishing was great and it was with sadness that we headed back to Sydney in late October.
This was quickly forgotten two days later as we boarded a flight to Norfolk Island, eager to tangle with some of the massive kingfish the Island is renowned for. I quickly fell in love with this place and would rate it as the highlight of our time away. The fishing was out of this world, the scenery was incredible and we made lifelong friends in a few short weeks. To top off the trip Tom proposed on a cliff top overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A truly magical night in a magical part of the world, I was ready to move there!
Bay of Plenty
Next stop on our adventure were the beautiful waters of Hervey Bay in SE QLD. It was a long journey from Sydney with the boat in tow, but well worth the drive. During our three week stay we caught some great fish and were blown away by the incredible backdrop of Fraser Island. A must do if you are looking at travelling to SE QLD!
Marlin Fever
We hadn’t done a great deal of marlin fishing in our boat prior to this trip, so we were keen to target them when they showed off the NSW Coast. We had some tough days, and some great days, but most importantly, learnt a heap along the way. Highlights for us included a swag of prizes at the Bill Heyward Memorial Tournament for a tagged striped marlin on 15kg line, and some memorable fishing on the South Coast where we tagged seven marlin in three days fishing with just the two of us on board.
Over the course of the year we were lucky enough to spend some time marlin fishing aboard other boats, including some of the best in the business. A huge thank you to Scott Lee, Muzz and Katie from Gunrunner for having us aboard and for teaching us so much. You’ve had a huge impact on our fishing. Also to George and Lisa Lirantzis from Side Effect, thank you for all you taught us about game fishing on the south coast and keeping us up to date with fishing reports from the area. We had a ball fishing next to you on some of those days cheering each other on as another marlin took to the air.
Overall for the year we tagged 16 marlin between us, with our best day being three marlin in half a day from our 17 foot trailer boat.
Staying Warm in the North
Once the marlin bite subsided we again headed north for warmer weather. The NSW North Coast fishery is exceptional in late autumn/early winter and we were treated to some spectacular fishing. The Spanish and spotted mackerel were still about in big numbers, and we caught them even when targeting other species like snapper. Other highlights from that part of the trip were some big snapper, including a 96cm model, and an incredible run of jewfish in Evans Head where we boated five jewfish over 120cm in a week. It truly was champagne fishing, and we enjoyed weeks of calm, warm weather, whilst much of NSW was battered by strong south westerly winds and freezing temperatures.
Tuna Time
As the trip neared its end we had one final thing to tick off our bucket list. We had caught southern bluefin tuna at the start of the trip, but hadn’t caught them from our own boat. We did a warm up trip out of Ulladulla with George Lirantzis aboard Side Effect landing three nice bluefin up to 60kg before we were hit with two weeks of terrible weather. When we finally got our weather window Bermagui didn’t disappoint. Our first fish in our boat was a corker, estimated at 65-70kg and we backed it up a day later with a new pending world record bluefin of 49kg on 10kg line. It was a fairy tale end to the trip and meant we returned to Sydney on the biggest of highs.
Personal Bests
In a year of fishing, it was inevitable that a lot of PBs were going to be broken. Here are just a few of our favourite PBs from the trip:
Chloe
– World record 74kg southern bluefin tuna on 24kg line
– World record 49kg southern Bluefin tuna on 10kg line
– 135cm kingfish
– 125cm jewfish
– 96cm snapper
– 110cm queenfish
– 115cm amberjack
– 103cm golden trevally
– Approx 100kg striped marlin
– Approx 90kg black marlin
Tom
– 130cm jewfish (1 of 3 over 120cm Tom landed in a week)
– 129cm kingfish
– 89cm snapper
– 108cm golden trevally
– 115cm queenfish
– 71cm pearl perch
– 60kg + southern bluefin tuna
The bad bits
As with any big adventure there were bound to be some challenges, and whilst we did encounter some lowlights we were generally pretty lucky. We had car breakdowns and expensive repair bills, spent hours on the side of the road replacing trailer wheel bearings, lost a $500 downrigger overboard and had countless “ones that got away” stories. I still think about some of the big fish we lost over the course of the year, but if those few things were the worse things that went wrong, then I think we were very blessed.
A Big Thank You
Over the course of our year we were humbled by the support we received from our family and friends. Not only did they put up with us fishing all the time and often missing important events, but many of them put us up in their homes as we travelled, helping our limited budget stretch a lot further. Not to mention the many fishing friends who freely shared GPS marks and details of hot bites to help us catch fish in areas we’d never visited or simply took us out for the day fishing, thank you guys, you know who you are.
Of course we also couldn’t have done this trip without the help of our sponsors and we are so grateful to have the support from the best in the industry.
Needless to say we had an amazing trip and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. We lived with the attitude of “no regrets” and we have tried to take that attitude with us as we settle back in to a more “normal” life. We made friends who we never would have met if we had just carried on with our day to day lives and we learnt more from a fishing perspective than we would have learnt in five years of just fishing on the weekends.
As sad as I am that this particular adventure has come to an end I know this is just the beginning of many more exciting fishing adventures!
Thank you for sharing these adventures with me through my blog and Facebook page. I hope this blog inspires you to stop putting your dreams on hold and get out there and make them reality. You won’t regret it!
Chloe Taylor is a Sydney-based angler who regularly writes for Fishing World magazine. See more images related to this blog at: http://www.shefishes.com.au/blog-a-year-long-fishing-adventure/
