Day 75 7th July 2014 Monday. Kevin headed off walking and shell searching. He made the statement he was going to go as far as he could. I meanwhile did a load of washing, got our lamb slow cooker meal ready and went for a walk with mum along the south beach to the 1 km mark. I met a couple Peter and Judy who have lived at 80 mile beach for 4 ½ years and was talking about fishing. They old me about the bait they use which is pilchards soaked in 1 part sugar and 4 parts salt and this causes the fish to harden and therefore stay on the hook better. They also showed me their line rig and turns out they sell them so I bought 2 and also some special curved hooks. The sinker was on a moveable line. Took over to dad for him to set up our lines. Peter also said to ignore the best time to fish fallacy one hour either side of the high tide as they have caught fish at all times. Judy did say that as the tides are close together today and tomorrow should be good days. Judy actually headed off at 9.15am which was 1 hour before low tide. Meanwhile Kevin came back from his walk with some good shells. A quick lunch then saw us all leaving at 12.15 to try our new set-up. We headed down the north beach and went about 7 km and threw our lines in. Dad got a couple of bites but no fish. After a couple of hours dad wanted to move further down so we packed up and went another 2km. Not many people down this far and as we pulled up the people further down landed a fish. Dad was excited. We threw in and then I went off looking for shells but really to chat with the couple who caught the fish. They had a Blue Threadfin and also a King Threadfin (it was 56 cm long). I came back and found that Kevin had caught his first fish since Derby. It was a Blue Threadfin. He was excited. From then we all started to catch fish. Dad got 2, I got 2 and Kevin got 2 plus a smaller one we used for bait. It got to the stage we had to leave as we ran out of bait. What fun. After tea we played canasta and dad and I won easily.
