G'day. The best thing about writing a fishing column is that you can abuse people.
First up, I'd like to abuse all those grotty fishermen who are too bloody lazy to take their rubbish home with them.
The worst rubbish that the Clean Up Australia volunteers found around our waters was empty plastic bait bags and discarded fishing line.
If it's fairly easy to take bait into your favourite fishing spot, it should be just as easy to take the packaging home with you.
Next to cop a serve is NSW Maritime, the government mob who are supposed to manage our waterways and repair broken navigational aids.
On a pre-dawn trip across Lake Macquarie at the weekend, we noticed at least four channel markers and two cardinal marks whose lights weren't functioning.
That's an extremely dangerous proposition for anyone unfamiliar with the lake as contact with one of these, even at ten knots, would be rather catastrophic.
The last to get abused is Mother Nature.
What was a perfect day last Saturday was spoiled by dirty seas and lack of fish.
The SS Kilkeary ventured out to the FAD (fish attracting device) off Swansea, with the specific intent of catching mahi mahi.
A steady swell and a little breeze should have made for ideal fishing conditions.
Unfortunately, dirty green seas didn't.
Apparently there has been a lot of water coming out of the Hawkesbury river system of late and due to the prevailing winds and ocean currents, most of the debris from the river system has been pushed north, resulting in the dirty, fish-free water we encountered.
Despite all this though, we still managed to get half a dozen mahi mahi in the boat, one of which surpassed the legal 600mm length and finished up on skipper Mark's dinner plate.
That's it.
No, wait! Hold the phone...
Well done, Waterways. Their contractors are now out on the lake, fixing those lights as we speak.