I began rock fishing when I was just 12 or 13, casting my line from the wave-washed ledges around Tathra, on the far south coast of NSW, along Australia’s eastern seaboard. From the very first fish landed, I was hooked… I guess you could say it was love at first bite! I moved to the Nowra/Bomaderry area of southern NSW with my family early in 1973, not long before my 15thbirthday. My first visit to the famous rock ledges of Jervis Bay (places I’d already heard so much about) involved a walk into the Outer Tubes with my father one weekend that summer. It was a busy day on the rocks with a good number of anglers in attendance. From memory, we saw a nice mackerel tuna (kawa kawa) landed and a couple of good fish lost, and I marvelled at the quality and calibre of tackle in use, quickly realising that my own very basic gear fell well short of the mark necessary to take on serious land based game (LBG) fishing… But I also knew that was I wanted to do! By autumn 1974 I was regularly visiting the rock ledges on the south side of the Bay, between Bowen Island and Steamers Beach. My favourite was a location we called “The Pimple”. Reaching it to fish at first light required a pre-dawn walk of nearly an hour and a strenuous rope-assisted climb down some crumbling ledges. We enjoyed fantastic sport there (and at nearby St Georges Head or “Corangamite”, as we knew it), mostly lure casting for salmon, tailor, kingfish, smaller tuna, bonito, trevally and juvenile Samson fish. I caught my first “big” fish here in autumn 1974… an 18 pound (8 kilo) mack’ tuna spun up on an old...