As you’re one of the avids who read my musings each month, I can write with free-reign — knowing that you too have a love of fishing that requires no stoking to keep it alive.
It’s our escape hatch when the world feels a bit much. It’s the balm for our overcooked brains. It’s where big feelings get untangled, where mateship deepens, where silence becomes sacred. Fishing connects us to nature, to family, to ourselves — and to those rare, golden moments of stillness that seem in short supply these days.
Sharing intergenerational time as fishos is something we take for granted, but moments like these are becoming rarer as society embraces the tech age.
It’s one of the last great levellers. Kids, parents, nannas and papas, first-timers, die-hards, blokes in busted thongs and women with braid-cuts — all stand shoulder to shoulder on bank, pier, boat… No screens. No noise. Just bait, banter, and that beautiful tug of possibility.
We all fish for different reasons — solitude, challenge, ritual, joy — but we share the same awe. And while others may not always see what we see in it, we know. We feel it in our bones, and we carry it in stories that never quite lose their shine.
One of my favourite things about fishing is the network of die-hard fashionistas I have around me who celebrate its wonder with the exuberance of a farm kid in galoshes meeting a rain puddle mid-drought.
Just yesterday, one of our (WRFL) leadership team flicked me a reel (the digital kind… tee hee) from Channel Nine featuring two brothers who landed a metre+ queenfish off the wharf at K’gari in 2024. Now, I’m told this story did the rounds some time ago, but I’m a touch late to the party. (Granted, it wasn’t edited with the polish of a Starlo Gets Reel production, but hey — we can’t all have that kind of post-production talent!)
What it did have was spirit. Watching the brothers work together, soaking in the spectator energy, and visibly blooming in their moment of celebrated success… well, it triggered a wash of memories for me. Moments I’ve witnessed — or lived — of similar, intergenerational joy. You know the ones: your kid lands their first flatty and you cheer like they just won a Grand Final; your mate hooks up after a dry spell and it’s high-fives all round like he invented angling.
I know I’ve written about this many times, but I know we sing from the same songbook — and I hope you enjoy the refreshed lyrics as we go. Each little glimmer of evidence of the enduring lure of fishing inspires me to raise it in our collective consciousness… like a spark stoked from our die-hard love — a reminder, as ever, of the magic stitched into the fabric of this pastime… As Steve not-so-gently nudged us in his editorial above, Australia without fishing is unfathomable!
This is the exact reverie that crept into Jo’s mind whilst watching the two brothers on K’gari Wharf. Three cousins triumph during “a diamond moment”.
It shares a magic echoed in classic Aussie rites of passage: footy training and weekend showdowns; half-burnt sausages and sideways rain during camping trips; learning how to cook spuds in the coals… damper!; triumphant bushland explorations and dodgy cubby houses with questionable OH&S; building and defending forts with your mates in the loungeroom and then graduating to the yard… gosh, I’m really showing my age now!
But I do worry that, as society leans harder into screens and curated feeds, some of those analogue delights are fading from view. Fishing, though? She’s holding firm.
Regardless of society shifts towards tech, she offers us those sacred rites of passage — again and again. Little milestones of growth and grit. Incremental victories that light up something primal, no matter our age or experience level. We don’t just angle for fish — we angle for competence, for peace, for connection.
And this quirky little K’gari queenfish yarn? It’s not just about skill, or teamwork, or survival, or even bragging rights. It’s about how fishing reaches somewhere deeper. Past sport. Past competition. Right into the guts of what it means to be human, and in it together.
Our young women are increasingly being introduced to fishing as early as our young men — there’s still a different vibe about girls fishing though.
Think about it: This story began with two women sharing a news story about a couple kids they have no connection with, because it inspires them. Imagine two women — or any two people really — sharing an old clip of a stranger’s epic full-field try or tough angle AFL goal-under-pressure and having a real moment over it. Would it spark this same warmth, this same sense of wonder? Maybe. Maybe not. But fishos? We’ll cheer a stranger’s win like it’s our own. Lean right into it. Years later, even.
And that’s what fascinates me. The endurance of our cheer. The universal marvel of the fish-that-was. We’re never over it. It’s never old.
Now, how long do you reckon we’ll wait before the news picks up a yarn for us all to share… only it’s two sisters, or maybe a pigeon pair, landing something special? Now that would be even cooler.
Please, keep sharing your moments… and let’s not let our fish be taken from under us.
Until next time, FISH ON!
For three decades Jo has worked with businesses and personalities, helping them to promote themselves in one form or another, whether through graphic design, advertising, promotions or marketing.
She has owned a fishing rod for just as long, but it’s only been in this new century that it hasn’t been allowed to gather dust.
Jo is a passionate advocate for the sport of fishing and its promotion as a healthy lifestyle for women.
To find out more about Jo visit her website HERE
Or you can visit her Fishtopia Web site HERE or on the banner below.
Jo is also the founder and National President of the Women’s Recreational Fishing League (WRFL) Inc. The work they do is very important in balancing the participation ratios of fishing in Australia, thus making the collective voices of Aussie anglers more harmonious and powerful, as well as shoring up the economy of the sector. For more information visit their Website at womensrecfishingleague.org
