Oh well, the fishing would just have to wait till tomorrow. The next morning I awoke with the anticipation one gets when waking up in a foreign destination.

A quick breakfast and I was in the ute and driving down to the river armed with my spinning rod and, well, not much else. You see upon opening my bag I discovered that I had left my lure box at home. However, not to worry. A journey to the esky resulted in the discovery of some skirt steak, a proven fishtaker back home.

Now, you may laugh at this, but rest assured my grandpa has been using this for years and, let me tell you, it sure has worked for him (well, on mullet and tommies anyway). Nevertheless I was pumped up and ready for some action. Now the Nepean River was not how I remembered it. It was seven years since my last visit and what I remembered as once being gently sloping banks were now close enough to be classed as sheer-faced cliffs; I guess my memory wasn't that good. My next task, to make myself a float (I never even thought of bringing one of these).

A piece of reed did nicely and I quickly rigged up my rod with a size four chemically sharpened beak hook tied to about three foot of 3kg monofilament directly under the 'float'. It was near impossible to walk along the river bank in search of likely bass territory due to the enormous creeper growth, so I just had to make do with what was in front of me; a nice little snag protruding out into about six foot of water. I cast out and waited. It was a beautiful still day, the tranquillity interrupted only by the occasional bellbird call.

Five minutes had passed and not a touch. I decided that perhaps I was not getting down deep enough, so began to retrieve my rig. BANG!!  About three metres from the bank my line suddenly stopped and began heading for the snag. Fishing with only 2kg Pretest and using an ultra light seven foot Shimano estuary rod I certainly had to be careful not to hit the brakes too suddenly. After a minute or so I managed to get the fish up to the bank where, to my astonishment, I had landed my first Australian Bass, a fish of about 35cm.