A BAD day's fishing is still a good day out.
That's the unofficial motto of the Newcastle and Port Stephens Game Fish Club formed in 1929. So, despite various name changes over time, that would make it 94 years young this year.
And yet, the popular Shoal Bay club only grew to become a popular institution because of some seasick anglers going ashore. And its early history also involved an agitated squatter already there waving a shotgun at these intruders on "his" beach.
This weekend the club is playing host to what's billed as the biggest game fishing tournament in the Southern Hemisphere. All very fitting, as Port Stephens is credited as the birthplace of game fishing in Australia after a Dr Mark Lidwill caught our first black marlin on a rod and reel off Port Stephens, near Broughton Island, way back in 1913.
Meanwhile, for this latest fishing contest, more than 100 vessels and about 600 anglers are estimated to be taking part in the annual competition. And the black marlin run on the inshore reefs off Port Stephens promises to be perhaps the best in 25 years by the time the annual NSWGFA Interclub State Championships is due to wind up tomorrow.
The latest event of men "messin' about in boats" follows the recent Billfish Shootout. While tiger sharks and fish like tuna are fair game, the tag and release system for marlin is aimed at ensuring ocean stocks continue to be sustainable.
And we may have Hunter Valley naturalist, the late Athel D'Ombrain, to thank for the concept. Besides being a pioneer angler, he is credited with promoting the marlin tag and release idea after experiments conducted at sea back in 1938.
D'Ombrain (1901-1985), of Lorn, was naturally a foundation member of Shoal Bay's present game fish club and I'll outline part of his busy life shortly.
But now, let's start at the beginning. What's described as the club's original pennant reveals it was called the Newcastle Shark and Sword Fish Club between 1929 and 1938.
A short history of the club goes something like this. At the height of the Great Depression in 1932 a fishing enthusiast named Bob Elliott advertised in a Sydney newspaper for partners to establish a fishing club in Port Stephens.
Several hundred like-minded men replied and a 60ft cruiser was charted by three members to travel to Port Stephens to scout around for a suitable cottage base. The trio settled on remote Bundabah, above Fame Cove on the port's northern shore. Regular fishing parties of young, unmarried men from both Sydney and Newcastle were arranged.
On one trip, with the weather being too rough to venture outside the port waterway, their charter boat anchored instead in stunning Shoal Bay near the ocean entrance. Later, the fishermen went ashore to boil up a cuppa and cook lunch. That's when they were confronted by an angry man carrying a shotgun who threatened to shoot unless they left his beach.
After tempers cooled, the anglers began thinking of building a new clubhouse by the beachside. A lease was soon obtained for Shoal Bay foreshore land where the Shoal Bay Country Club now stands. The original 1934-built clubhouse had large dormitories but were unsuitable for families at a time when members were growing older and getting married. There was now a demand to convert rooms for family accommodation.
The game fish club named was apparently replaced by the term Shoal Bay Club House. But the site was then requisitioned by United States military forces as World War 2 loomed.
After the war ended, the business and premises was bought by the Randall family in 1947 who built it up into the successful Shoal Bay Country Club. By then the game fish club had relocated down the road to become the iconic club with a popular bistro and great views that it is today. The club's modest weatherboard building has been replaced with a gleaming white modern structure opened by then NSW treasurer Ken Booth on February 17, 1984.
It has since been greatly expanded although, as a nod to nostalgia, the clubhouse's humble, original double doors still feature in the present clubhouse foyer. They came from life member Fred Toll.
The landmark club's site, on busy Shoal Bay Road, is a far cry from the very early days, according to the late Athel D'Ombrain, photographer, optician, cricketer, historian and avid fisherman.
"There was not one house at (Shoal) Bay (before 1935)," he once recalled.
While it may have been a bushland paradise in the 1930s, the anglers were still roughing it. For a start, there were no chairs on their fishing craft. The big game hunters of that era sat on the decks and splayed their feet for support and experimented to find the best fishing rods. Makeshift rods included one made from the blank of an archer's bow and another was a broken javelin shaft.
To illustrate how to catch a prime fighting fish "the hard way" back in April 1937, there's a fading picture on the club's foyer wall to this day. It shows a chair-less club fisherman Athel D'Ombrain sitting on a wet boat deck, his feet braced against a low gunwale as he fights a big tiger shark out of Port Stephens in rough seas with a cane rod. His rod broke after three hours.
"Fellow fisherman Dr Keith Watkins cut the line (disqualifying shark), then joined it to his own line and took over the fight. He broke his rod before landing the shark after 4 3/4 hours," D'Ombrain later wrote of the titanic struggle.
Game fishing was relatively new around the 1900s and it took the influence of people like US visiting author and big game fisherman Zane Grey in the 1930s to help popularise the new sport. In the late 1950s it received a new burst of favourable publicity when big radio and TV personalities of the era, like Jack Davey and Bob Dyer, came to Port Stephens to become keen devotees of the sport.
Such a pity then that game fish pioneer Dr Mark Lidwill back in 1913 did not realise he'd caught the world's first black marlin on rod and reel. After the fish had been weighed, it was put on ice and shipped to the Australian Museum. It was identified merely as a black marlin, then reduced to a skeleton and put on display and later forgotten.
Port Stephens game fish historian Peter Silcock then began research (in 1998) into Dr Lidwill's "unknown" world record catch. His search led to the Australian Museum and once there proper recognition finally came that the black marlin skeleton on display had indeed come from Port Stephens.
It had only taken 85 years.
A plaque commemorating Dr Lidwill's prize catch was unveiled at the weigh-in station on the public jetty at Nelson Bay in February 2003.
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