This was the final postal for 2014 for our club but for me it had a very special twist. One of our junior members, Chad Randall, has been invited to the U/16 KZN trials. Chad is 14 but looks 11 and has been fishing with his dad in the club for 2 years. He has mostly concentrated on scratching in gullies. Without going into too much personal detail, his father is a single parent with financial constraints. I had a feeling that Chad would do a lot better with a grinder, so I took him to the dam and let him try my set up. He took to it like a duck to water, so I contacted Barry Wareham and asked if he could help Chad with a decent rod and grinder combo. Barry came to the party and put together an Assassin Toray and grinder at a really good price. His dad collected the rod from BM but told Chad it was mine. His face was a picture when we gave it to him.
When we got to Grosvenor on Friday morning, the first thing we did after unpacking, was take him to the beach for casting practise. It is one thing throwing a sinker in a dam, but a totally different thing to wade and cast a bait. Chad had never waded before so it was essential that he get a feel for it for trials.
After lunch Kelvin and I took the kids to the rocks in front of the cottage so that Jody, his 7 year old daughter, could catch a few gully fish. She caught 5 in a short space of time, then like most kids, got bored. I saw the little bay to the left was looking good so went hunting some lessers. I really wanted Chad to practise his casting, get the feel of the bite, hook-up and retrieve with braid as he had always fished with nylon. I landed a smaller lesser so signalled to Kelvin that Chad must go and fetch his new rod and join me.
I concentrated on Chad, helping him with his traces, baits and casting. It was really good to see this young man wading out and casting with confidence. We were standing on a little rock outcrop chatting when this kid literally got pulled off his feet
. With a loud YOY, he started retrieving the fish but it was taking line and pandemonium set in between Kelvin, Chad and I. Kelvin was trying to set his drag, while Chad was trying to reel in - I was trying to get him off the rock and onto the sand and the poor kid was getting very confused while Kelvin and I were trying to hand over our rods to each other. I shoved my rod into Kelvin's hand and got Chad to back up on the beach. It was his first really decent fish so he didn't know how to play it with the waves and ending up just cranking it. I saw it in the shore break and ran to grab the leader. The wave sucked back, the fish saw me and took off. Unfortunately the hook line snapped and the fish got away. It was a size lesser and I felt like
but that's fishing.
We upped his hook line to 0.5mm, got him baited up again and he cast out. I hooked onto a nice lesser and called him over to retrieve it. Now I took my time with him, coaching him on the retrieval and timing the waves. He landed the lesser and there were high fives all around. I got him to change to a 2/0 circle, coached him through the baiting up with 2 mackerel cutlets (as a dog had stolen our last piece of chokka) and he cast out. It wasn't long and he got pulled flat again. This time I was prepared, stood back and gently talked him through landing the fish. Chad handled that fish like a champion. I could not believe how he had taken everything I had told him and put it into practise. The first fish he was bent over his rod like a paper clip - this one he stood straight, ran back with the waves, let the fish take line when it wanted to ... it was picture perfect. Kelvin ran and grabbed the fish in the shore break. Now I wanted to cry because the look on that young man's face when he saw the size of the fish was just amazing. It was an awesome first catch on his new rod.
The youngster was now worn out, having tussled 3 size lessers in a row. I told him it was OK to call it quits, as he still had an 8 hour compo stint coming up the next day and it was getting late. Kelvin still wanted to fish so we hung around. I was about to go back to the cottage, when Kelvin went tight with another size lesser. I ran and grabbed it in the shore break and now it was Kelvin's turn to beam. All in all, just a wonderful afternoon.
We fished compo from 1.30pm to 9.30pm. The north easterly was gusting and conditions were generally pretty unpleasant. I managed to land a small shad and catface before we went back to the bay in the evening. Chad landed 2 smaller lessers on dark. The wind disappeared and it was a beautiful night. The other guys were fishing off the point in front of the cottage and flashed us to join them. The cob were on the bite. We landed 7 between us and then it was lines up. There were some very tired bodies at supper that night.
The next morning Chad went back to the bay to fish for lessers while we packed up - seeing his growth over the weekend and how truly hooked he had got on fishing was priceless. It made my weekend.
