CLUSTER DUCKS
Have you ever been in one of those situations where bad stuff just keeps
happening and painful events just seem to role seamlessly into each other?
OV ER the past year I’ve been
repeatedly visited by the evil Cluster
Duck fairy and it is amazing how
one simple omission leads to a world of painful
events. Let’s go through a typical day where things
pile up on each other.
I think it started in December. The plan was
to go out and catch a black marlin or any other
big pelagic game fish. My crew was totally
inexperienced and were keen to try their hand at
game fishing but were complete greenhorns. I
was to meet them at the boat ramp at 6 in the
morning. It was raining, and while setting up the
boat I dropped my much loved large and
expensive sounder onto the concrete, smashing
the screen into a thousand small pieces. That
hurt me a lot. Despite this, I put it in the boat,
and to my amazement it still worked to some
extent like a badly smashed mobile phone with
DAVID GREEN
50 fishingworld.com.au | September 2019By David Green
ever increasing patches of black on the screen.
Now somewhere along the line after this I broke
my usual ordered and pedantic routine but did
manage to hook the boat on the trailer, pack the
gear and head to the ramp. I met my friends
there and launched the boat. The weather was
good and a lot of boats were going out, so I had
to park the car a fair distance away and walk
back to the ramp. When I arrived the back of the
boat was curiously low in the water. Ah yes,
forgot to put the bung in! Second time in over 40
years. Still reeling from the sounder disaster,
I dived in, grabbed the bung from the outboard
well and replaced it, only to have my mobile
phone and keys drown in the process. That just
added to the pain, but with the bilge pump
furiously clearing a massive amount of water the
back of the boat slowly rose and I reluctantly
headed out in fairly calm conditions. My mind
just wasn’t in the right space at all.
I set out a spread of lures and we began
trolling about 20 kilometres south east of theGold Coast Seaway. There had been quite a few
black marlin around over the previous week and
I was pretty sure a fish would at least partially
make up for the dramas encountered so far.
Within about 20 minutes my crew turned green
and started relieving themselves of their
breakfast. After an hour it was pretty clear it
was time to go in. We didn’t turn a reel, and
returned to the ramp. My crew left and it was at
that time I walked to the car, only to find that
the keyless entry on Toyotas does have a
significant down side when your keys are
drowned! I walked the 6 kilometres home to get
a spare key, but when I got there the electronic
gate key was also drowned. I finally managed to
get into the house, get the spare keys and head
back to the ramp on foot. My mobile phone was
drowned, showing a faint but futile light and
making beeping noises and all those other
features of wet electronics. Some say you can
put it in rice and it will be fixed. Personally,
I think that is rubbish!Beware of the evil
Cluster Duck!