Noosa Heads, South East Queensland

Noosa's coastal sensation

21st July 2008
Dark shadows lurking behind my metal slice... each time I cranked faster, they crashed to the surface trying to grab my spoon skipping across the water line. Wham!!! Fish on! "Tee-Tid! Tee-Tid! Tee-Tid!"In a split second, everything was gone. The scenic atmosphere instantaneously replaced by a pitch-black layer. I struggled to open my eyes, and it took me a couple of seconds to realise that all of that was just a dream and my alarm from my cellphone had to ruin that awesome moment - though it was just a dream, with a few good size Giant Trevally bombarding my spoon...

It took me quite a while to agree to my mates the night before, who all scored distinction for persuasion, to go on a 2-day road trip to Noosa Heads, in the Sunshine Coast region of South East Queensland. The main reason for my hesitation was the 1 hour lecture on Safety and Quality Assurance on Tuesday (22/07/08), and that we would only be back on campus after dusk. In the equation, that meant I would miss my first day of school. How wrong!

"Vroom!" The engine of the car started anyway. I found myself squeezed in a small car with 4 mates of mine, with my fishing rod and my artificial lures. The primary intention of this trip is to fish. Yes, winter and it's bloody cold alright. But my fishing-titis acted up and I had to do it. It was a great day anyhow, with clear blue skies and sparsely scattered clouds to start off with.


Janice was the captain of the ship for the short initial part of the journey when she had to run some errands. Reiko took over the hot seat soon after. The start of the long ride saw us chattering away in excitement and soon, conversations died down and we were all into our own stuff, our own space. I stucked my Audiotechnica earphones into my ears, and suddenly I was in a vacuum, completely cut off from the sounds in my surroundings. Switched on my iPod Classic, scrolled to Downtempo, pressed 'play', and soon the laidback beats brought me into a little relaxing, yet mildly melancholic dimension.

It's always somewhat a soothing pleasure, to be on a long road trip, with your favourite genres of music flowing into your ears, while having the luxury to look out of the window to witness the magnificent progressions of landscapes and vast spaces. It was sort of like a country-road drive, and you would see almost infinite layers of pine trees, and other temperate and tropical perennials, rivers of various sizes, and long distant chains of mountains smacked across the horizon.

After more than 2 hours of drive, we finally entered the Noosa Heads region. We had a little trouble trying to get to Backpackers (a popular worldwide hostel). The great thing about the location of Backpackers is it's location - located just a couple of hundreds of metres away from the Noosa River. Unloaded our bags from the car, checked in, grabbed my fishing rod and bag, and off we went, hunting for food and beverages. We were absolutely famished from that long drive, with 80% of the group having missed out on breakfast. I was the only bugger who woke up early enough to make myself breakfast because I know my body too well. We had some good beef kebabs in wraps, and very quickly, I went separate ways. Their destination was the main beach and their motive(s) was to get a tan and/or to chill at the beach and read a book or something. Mine was simple - to find fish.

To waste minimal time on getting to the fishing spots, and to gain maximum fishing time (the sun sets around 17 30 hours during winter here), I ran my way there. On the sandy bay, I saw a few anglers, and they were spaced out almost evenly, respecting each other's fishing space. Most of them were old folks and couples, sitting there quietly enjoying the moment, while waiting for their baits to attract something. It was really a nice scene to be honest. I don't see such a thing happening in Singapore. In most cases, people see fishing as a dirty and 'un-cool' thing to do. But it's different here. Couples are having fun fishing, husbands and wives helping each other to put the bait on, females fishing alone and stuff. It was an entirely refreshing thing to witness. I came across this lady from Switzerland, who was fishing alone along the sandy shores, and we had a nice little conversation. She does flyfishing back home. I was utterly impressed. I mean how cool is that?! And she cheered me on when I told her I just picked up flyfishing less than a month before I came to Australia. It was downright motivating.


When you're all alone, the tripods come in place

The water was cold, and my toes soon became numbed after standing knee-deep in the chilling waters for more than an hour, combing through the long stretch of sandy shores. I saw a bridge from afar, instinctively, the pillars are structures that baitfish would primarily use them as a form of shelter from predators. Worked bloody hard to entice any possible predators nearby - switched from mid-diving minnows to deep diving crank baits, from surface poppers to shallow runners, from rubbers to metal slices. It was just dead quiet, not even a nudge on my lures. Winter would be my best guess, when fish get real lethargic. And they do not move around much to conserve energy to fight the cold. I still blame on my fouled luck anyway. Shrugs!

to be continued...