Writer ‘PJ’ Jones finds a movie-making icon’s sayings are equally applicable to aspects of fishing.

Old Sam Goldwyn was onto something, what with all the sayings he made up – ‘Include me out’ is one of my favourites.

So what’s a smart-ass dead movie producer got to do with my fishing? Well, lots. ‘Include me out’ is a good place to start. Plenty of my friends love to go fishing with a bunch of mates, socialising away their time aboard. They then have to return to work to pay for it all, often fish-less, or nearly so.

Personally, I go fishing for a whole pile of reasons, and one of them, right up near the top of the list, is to catch fish. Go out with a bunch of mates? Include me out!

These days, my snapper fishing’s been largely refined to the essentials. Just me and maybe a mate or a son, a moderate amount of effort, really basic gear, a lot of exploring, and a massive amount of success. Top priority is my desire to get into the outdoors and relish it, together with a healthy appreciation that if I catch nothing, then I don’t have any of that messy filleting to do.

Unless I’m fishing a contest (more about that later), I go home once I’ve caught a feed for the next day or three. Living on the coast, I don’t put any fish at all in the freezer, as I have a fishing expedition most weekends and, occasionally, of a weekday morning as well.

‘Spare no expense to save money on this one!’ I was already doing what Sam recommended before realising it. I have described my fishing gear as ‘really basic’, but that’s partly a question of definition. Cheap gear’s not worth the money you waste on it. I broke a lot of rods and especially reels before cottoning onto the idea that good gear lasts and catches the fish after you hook them. These days, I wait until I can afford good equipment, anticipating the longer-term success it’ll bring me.

But I don’t take a lot of gear on any one expedition. Unlike many – if not most fisherfolk – I don’t take a range of gear with me to cover a variety of eventualities. I decide what sort of fishing I want to do, then I’m on the sea doing it until it produces.

‘The harder I work, the luckier I get,’ is another Sam Goldwyn expression, but in this context I prefer Gary Player’s golfing version: ‘The more I practice, the better I get.’

I’ve observed people chopping and changing fishing methods during a day, hoping that a run of failure will turn around with a change of method. Occasionally they succeed, but I succeed just as well by varying the one approach I adopt for the day.

Fishing the basics – the essentials – frees me to thoroughly explore my environment and the techniques. The greatest fascination is the understanding that I can always do better; the day I reckon I’ve nailed it is the day I’ll do something else.

So, my rock fishing is done with a 7-foot (2.13m) boat rod, an overhead reel, one hook tied to the monofilament mainline, no swivel, no trace and no sinker. I berley heavily to bring the fish to me, and fish my feet.

I worked out this technique one night, years ago, watching one of the great TV fishing-show experts backing his boat right onto a rocky outcrop, before proceeding to fish closer than I’d been casting baits to only a week before from that same place. Lightbulb moment!

The next lightbulb moment took longer to occur. For years, I’d cut, scratched and soaked myself landing from my kayak onto rocks. Finally, I combined the fishing-the-feet idea with an aversion to scratched soakings, and decided to try fishing from the kayak into the territory I had been fishing from the rocks. I found more comfort, more fish, more fun.

And then the new generation of softbaits arrived. It was blindingly obvious that this technique was invented to fit the constraints of fishing from kayaks. Light gear and not much of it, easilycarried ‘baits’ and not many of them, safe access to rocky, reefy habitat… Wow, Disneyland!

I found that my 12-foot plastic dinghy, powered by a 2.5hp Yamaha, is nearly as effective as the kayak for soft-baiting, too. Plus, my butt stays dry and said mate or son can accompany me. Neither of these vessels has any electronics aboard and never will.

Over the last few years I’ve been entering a few snapper competitions fishing exclusively from the kayak or the dinghy, up against competitors in boats with many times my range. (In fact, I can range further with the kayak, as my launch sites are anywhere a road approaches.)

I won the first two competitions I entered, and have placed well ever since. Modesty restricts further boasting, but I’ve caught over 200 snapper longer than 80cm. Not bad for a simple, escapist fisherman.