The people filming our water

I lost a fortnight to local fishing YouTube. Evenings, mostly, one channel into the next, the way you do.

Somewhere in the second week I noticed they all do the same thing.

They show you everything. The rig getting tied, the knot, the retrieve, the drift, the sounder screen, the fish going back. And then the camera stays high, or the edit cuts, or the bloke says "a spot on the lake" and moves on. Not one of them gives up the where.

That is a rule nobody wrote down and everybody follows. And I like it.

Mind you, from the rocks or off a beach there is not that much to give away. Everybody can see the wall. The gutter is there for anyone who walks down at low tide and looks. Land-based is not boat fishing, where a mark on a sounder is worth keeping to yourself.

What matters is when you are standing there. And then where exactly you stand once you are, which is the part no website can tell you and should not pretend to. That one belongs to whoever has put the hours in on that wall.

So they do the how. The site does the when. Two different jobs, and I am glad somebody is doing theirs.

The other thing worth saying: filming it is work. You fish, you set up a camera, you fish worse because you are setting up a camera, and then you sit down at night and cut it and upload it and do it again next week. Mostly for nothing. Four years of weekly episodes without missing one is a real thing to have done.

The ones I keep going back to

Butchers Bite. Nathan and Taylor film the lake more or less as it happens. Episode 9 opens with an admission: seven winter sessions, six to twelve hours each, two fish. Most channels cut that. They led with it. And when a tip comes from somebody else they say whose it was. Their yakka method is named after the friends who taught them.

Lowys Fishing. Soft plastics, slowly. Last September he put a drone down under the Swansea bridge at the bottom of the tide. If you have ever floated a bait through there wondering whether anything is home, watch it. Something is home.

Fishermans Warehouse. Jason Nunn has filmed a weekly report out of Warners Bay for years. Which wind wrecks the lake, which wind suits the beaches, when to stay home. If I could keep one channel it would probably be this one, and that is a strange thing to say about the shop's marketing video.

Aussfish. Dave squids the lake on fifty dollar combos and bright yellow mono, grinds out twenty-squid bags one drift at a time, and shows every rig. Sign-off: "let's get some".

Hunters fishing adventures. Four years of weekly episodes without missing one, he says, and after a few I believe him. Luderick on green weed gathered free off the foreshore. A banana curry catch-and-cook. Mysterious bubbles in the middle of the lake. Sign-off: if you ain't fishing, you're wishing.

Simmo's Fishing Adventures. Took a mate out on the harbour for his first jewfish. A hook got swallowed, a fish wrapped itself round somebody's anchor line, the gaff work was, his words, a shocker. They got it in. That is about how night fishing actually goes.

Starlo Gets Reel. Steve Starling came out on the shortest day of the year, fished the lake with a local, took three jewfish at dusk and called it a magnificent fishery on camera. He has fished everywhere. He did not have to say that.

Hook Hunt Camp Australia. One video put them here: tailor off Blacksmiths Beach on metals, dusk into dark, hooked up nearly every cast while the school was through. Worth watching before your next evening down there.

Who I missed

Plenty, certainly. A fortnight of watching is nothing against years of filming.

So: if somebody films this water and belongs here, send them to info@fishnewy.com.au. Same if you are on the list and I have got something wrong about you. I would rather look silly asking than pretend I know the whole scene.

I would like to keep featuring them here. If you film this water, or you know somebody who does, the same address works. Watching a fortnight of it did more for me than any amount of staring at my own numbers.