My Internet Marketing Experience

Hi there and welcome to my blog.

My name is Geoff Trebilco and I live with my partner Julie in Clifton Beach, a northern beach suburb of Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

I worked for nearly 30 years with Rio Tinto, the last 10 as a Business Systems Consultant. For the last five years I have owned and managed a small business in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. I still manage it now remotely but visit often.

Recently we joined Toastmasters International through a new club here called Kickstart Cairns. I recently prepared and delivered my first speech and thought I would share it here. The actual speech was somewhat smaller as I had to keep timing to within 6 minutes. However I enjoyed recalling some memories and writing it down. So not to bore you but here it is:

In Search of the Scream of the Reel.

Madam Toastmaster, Toastmasters and guests.

I recently overheard two guys talking about fishing. One says to the other, “I am NEVER going to take my wife fishing EVER again.”

“That bad!” says the other.

“Yeah, she did EVERYTHING wrong, every thing. She talked too much, rocked the boat all the time, tried to stand up, tangled the lines, put the bait on the hook wrong, used the wrong lures and WORST of all she caught more fish than me.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I enjoy fishing and just love seafood. Come with me today as I relive some of my experiences.

My earliest memories are fishing related. As very young children we used to make our own fishing lines by pinching Mum’s cotton, tying it to the end of a piece of tea-tree and bending pins to use as hooks. We would go off to fish under a bridge over a nearby creek and catch what Dad used to call mountain trout. If we caught one that was 6 inches long we were heroes. But we would take them home, clean them and Mum would fry them up. We were pleased as punch as we enjoyed our catch.

We would also fish for eels in creeks and dams. Dad allowed us to use his precious fishing line and reel hooks for this purpose. Late in the afternoon we would set our lines. We would drive a stake into the river bank and set a short line with some meat on the end. The line was short so that the eel could not find a tree root or such in the water and wrap itself and the line around it. In the morning we would return and if we were lucky we would be feasting on eel that night.

When the blackback salmon were running Dad would take us fishing from a jetty at a local port. This fishing gave me the first sense of the “Scream of the Reel”. By this time we could afford real rod and reels and we would cast and spin for the Salmon. They would hit hard and really make us work to retrieve them.

My taste and fondness for seafood also grew from an early age. I think scallops were very plentiful and cheap in those days as we often had them, fried, mornay, curried or battered. Whitebait was also a favourite.

But the best was crayfish, real blood red southern cold water crays of King Island where I grew up. I was fortunate in that I could go skin diving for them. I think I was about 18 at the time and remember catching 7 crays by hand weighing a total of 65 lbs, almost 30 kilos. We and some friends feasted on crayfish for a week.

I spent my early adult life in Victoria. It was there that I ventured into real trout fishing with bait, spinner and fly. I thoroughly enjoyed the summer days stalking trout along a river bank. If I was lucky I would have a nice fat rainbow or brown trout for dinner that night wrapped in alfoil with butter and lemon and tossed in the oven. And of course Friday nights was the obligatory fish and chips wrapped in newspaper from the local Greek Fish and Chip shop.

From Victoria I moved to Bougainville where I really experienced the scream of the reel. We had a 15ft Savage Tasman, the smallest in the fishing and aquatic club. But we certainly enjoyed some spectacular fishing. Spanish mackerel, Yellow fin tuna, king fish, wahoo, red emperor, coral trout, dolphin fish, sailfish, marlin, you name it we had it all. Bougainville was a special place to fish with crystal clear pacific blue ocean, against a backdrop of sandy palm covered islands and Mount Bagana, a large active Volcano constantly exhausting steam like 100 power station cooling towers.

Often of a Sunday night we would take a fish from the days catch to a Chinese restaurant known as Black Joe’s in a small nearby village where the cook would cook it up for our dinner. He was given free rein to cook what he thought best and came up with some amazing dishes which we would consume with a bottle or two of Blue Nunn or Ben Ean. I remember one evening he did a red emporer in black bean sauce which I thought a strange and unappetising combination but it was really quiet spectacular.

I had many spectacular catches there, like a 17kg yellowfin tuna, the toughest fighting fish of the sea in my book, 3 sailfish in one day, twice, and a PNG record dolphin fish.

I also had the opportunity of representing Bougainville in a light tackle tournament held out of Dunk Island. I think it was August 1977. Our team was fortunate to be on a boat skippered by the legendary Dennis “Brazaka” Wallace who used to take people such as Lee Marvin chasing the big marlin. I believe he is now operating helicopter fishing charters on the cape.

In the early 80’s I resided in West Australia and my fishing became almost a non event. There was the occasional charter out behind Rottnest Island and when in the northwest a friend used to invite me out a few times. We used to catch a number of reef fish but Chinaman fish were plentiful and strangely enough they do not have the ciguatera poisoning as they do here on the East Coast. In fact they are very good eating fish in Northwest Australia.

The waters weren’t nearly as calm as Bougainville. I remember one time being so seasick I was almost passing out. My friend dropped me off on a Island for a couple of hours whilst he continued fishing.

There was memorable day whilst on holiday in Broome. I was fishing on the pier when I overhead some locals say that the first Spanish mackerel for the season had been spotted. I rigged up pilchard with a balloon and let it drift off the pier. It was about 100 metres out when suddenly the balloon went racing across the water. I jumped on the rod and set the hook. The reel screamed. I was in fishing heaven. Eventually with help of the locals we landed this 25KG Spanish mackerel.

For the next 20 odd years fishing did not play a big part in my life apart from holidays. A lot of the areas we went to were really overfished. The occasional whiting or bream was about the sum of all our efforts.

From 1997 to 2003 I had the opportunity of experiencing quiet a variety in seafood as I spent time in Indonesia, West Australia again, Portugal and western parts of USA.

Whilst living in West Australia I developed a passion for Japanese style seafood and a small Japanese restaurant in South Perth became my favourite. His sashimi and sushi were great and he used to cook the most amazing dishes.

The seafood in Portugal is amazing. I was astounded by the variety and quantities available. You often hear stories of over exploitation of fisheries but I saw no evidence there and prices were very reasonable. The Atlantic has been a food source since the beginning of time and still is.

If you ever visit Portugal you must try chocos grelhado and arroz de marisco. Grilled cuttlefish in their own ink and a shellfish like stew with tomatoes, herbs and rice.

In the States I found one of the best eating fish was halibut. It is a very large sole like fish they catch in cold waters around Alaska and it is cut and served as steaks. And of course Salmon was also plentiful and around $6-7 US dollars a pound.

When in Salt Lake City I found a very small Japanese sushi bar and would eat there at least once a week. The Chef/owner used to fly in the best, freshest seafood from Los Angeles. He used to do the most amazing sashimi and sushi. My children visited me whilst here and that is where they also really developed the taste for Japanese Seafood.

About 3 years ago after moving to the Sunshine Coast I purchased a boat and once again began searching for the scream of the reel. Julie never really understood what I meant until we hooked up our first large spotted mackerel. In fact we had it in stereo as we had a double hookup.

We have recently moved to Cairns and we have the boat with us. We have been out a couple of times and been successful mainly with school mackerel. We have also seen a real live crocodile within 200 metres of the boat ramp at Trinity Park Marina

We look forward to exploring the seafood restaurants and the fishing that Cairns has to offer as we chase the scream of the reel.

I wish to leave you with 3 observations.

The least experienced fisherman always catches the bigger fish.

The more your line is tangled, the better the fishing is around you.

Fishing will do a lot for a man but it will not make him truthful.

Madam Toastmaster.

Thanks for reading

I hope to have a subscription box soon to keep you up to date.

Cheers
Geoff