PAUL Hodgkinson has never caught a rainbow trout, but he has caught a rainbow.
The 70-year-old Alexandra Hills angler was fishing off the Wellington Point sandbank recently when wildlife photographer Steve Noble captured the perfect image.
It was Mr Hodgkinson at one of his favourite local spots, rainbow arcing above the Bay.
Mr Hodgkinson was trolling for whiting along the sandbank leading towards King Island, on the Birkdale-facing side where the fish gather as the tide pushes through.
“The whiting wait there and come in on the current,” he said.
He had earlier been pumping yabbies near the concrete wall at low tide, a ritual he says provides bait as well as exercise.
“I pump for yabbies – for bait and for exercise,” he said.
“I go there after low tide, then have a cup of tea.”
While Wellington Point remains a favourite shore-based spot, Mr Hodgkinson’s preferred fishing ground is further out, at the “Ormiston drop-off” reached by boat from Raby Bay.
He said the old, dredged channel, where the depth falls from about three metres to six, could produce snapper, mackerel, tailor and jewfish.
“Last year I pulled in a 14kg jewfish and more recently a 50cm snapper,” he said.
“You don’t have to go far to catch something.
“I spend little on petrol, but more on bait.”
Mr Hodgkinson fishes from a 20-year-old, 5.5-metre half-cabin boat and prefers the Ormiston spot during winter before sharks become more common from October.
“That’s when I head out to Peel Island,” he said.
“I get sick of catching sharks. They seem to like the dirty water.”
Fishing has been part of his life since childhood, when he travelled with his father and uncle by four-wheel-drive onto the Riverside Coal barge at Redland Bay before camping south of Point Lookout near Jumpinpin Bar.
They chased tailor and bream, helped locals haul mullet nets and, on cold winter nights, landed jewfish weighing up to 30kg.
“I used to go to bed in my waders, ready to go fishing in the morning,” he said.
One trip was especially memorable after a goanna ventured into his uncle’s tent.
“There was a bit of a kerfuffle when they both tried to get out at the same time and neither one of them got out the same way they got in,” he said.
Mr Hodgkinson said Cylinder Beach headland was another reliable tailor spot, particularly just before dawn and after dark.
“You could set your clock by them,” he said.
