Lads Day Out – Fishing in Tweed

Posted on 17. Mar, 2011 by Dan Collins in Australia, Blog

With me leaving Australia in a few days, one of the best friends that I’ve made while in Australia agreed to go out for the day with me considering we probably wouldn’t be in the same country for quite some time. We had a bit of a brainstorm of things we could do for the day and ended up hiring a boat down in Tweed-heads.

Obviously we weren’t just going to sail around for the whole day so Luke brought his fishing gear and a spare rod for me; while I was responsible for the food for the day – biscuits, chocolate, and some of those packs of sweets/ candy/ lollies from the Natural Confectionary Company… nobody said the food had to be healthy!

I’d already sold my car by now so I jumped on a bus around 10am and made my way down to Coolangatta. I had my iPod on for the journey so it went pretty fast but it was still nice to see the scenery for once as I’ve only ever been down that way when the light was starting to fade and I was driving.

I arrived in Coolangatta just before mid-day and wasn’t due to meet Luke until 12. I kicked off my shoes and took a walk along the beach. Even though Coolangatta was just down the road from where I was staying I couldn’t believe the difference. The streets were quieter, the area looked much better and the beach was amazing in comparison to Surfers Paradise. There were a few surfers trying to catch a few waves, plenty of families sitting on the beach just enjoying the weather, and there was even a real game of Frisbee going on. When I say real game I mean they had rules and were scoring points against each other etc. – it was rather entertaining to watch.

Just as I was starting to relax, the transformers theme tune started to play from my phone – it was Luke calling me to tell me he was here. I met him on the main strip in Coolangatta and he drove us to Tweed where we were getting the boat from.

It felt kind of weird once Luke had picked me up because I knew that it was going to be a long time until we done something like this again, and to tell you the truth it was kind of sad, but I intended to make the most of the day and have a good time!

Once we’d arrived at the boat hire place we unloaded the gear from the car and walked on to the pier. The guy was helping some other people on to a boat first and then he helped us on to ours. Luke drove us out of the bay so the man explained how to drive it etc. then we were off.

The tide was going out by the time we’d gotten out on to the water so the current was pretty strong. We sailed up river for around 15 minutes before we threw the anchor in and started to fish. I’ve never fished properly before in my life so Luke had to teach me how to cast off and reel it back in. It took me a fair few goes to get the hang of it but even then I wasn’t the best. In fact I’d go as far as saying I was pretty crap.

We moved around a few times trying different spots up and down the river. There were plenty of smaller fish around but we couldn’t seem to catch any big ones. I secretly wanted to catch a shark or something – I knew I didn’t have a chance and I knew I would have been totally screwed if I did, but I still wanted to!

Every now and again we’d take a bit of a break, have some food, chat about things guys normally talk about – to be fair it was an awesome day. I think in the end I tried using one of the Natural Confectionary snakes as a bit of bait – the fish didn’t like it… maybe it was just the wrong flavour?

Our time was coming to an end on the hire so we pulled in the anchor for the last time and made way back to the pier. I drove the boat back in but forgot to put it in reverse when trying to stop. I ploughed the front of the boat in to another boat that was moored there so left quite hastily.

Even though I provided an amazing lunch for us both we were both kind of hungry after the day out on the boat so headed back in to Coolangatta for some food. We parked in an underground car park behind the restaurants and walked up. Because we knew the food was nice there, we went to Grill’d which is where me and Cherice went after dropping the Melbourne Matt’s off at the airport.

With it getting pretty late by now, Luke drove me home and dropped me off at the house. I’d had an awesome day and it just goes to show that you don’t need to be doing extravagant activities to have a good time. A relaxing day out on the river with a friend, a boat and a few unhealthy treats is all you need! I’d definitely recommend it to people.

Tags: Australia, Tweed