MEMORIES OF ‘BREMS’
My two sisters, Colleen and Sharryn, have been visiting from over east for a week or so and brought with them a box of memorabilia from mum and dad’s, which had not been sorted through since they passed away. What a treasure trove of history we found. Mum had kept every letter I had written to them since I was 17 years old, back in the days of no emails. Having a penchant for detail, she had dated every letter and also made her own notes, which brought the memories flooding back.
So one letter I wrote to her and dad, better known as Jack, dated 10/2/89, is worth quoting exactly as it was written back then.
“Also, with all the fish we’ve been catching lately there’s nowhere to put them. Yes Jack, I finally caught my first dhufish a couple of weeks ago. It was only about 12-15lb but still beautiful eating. We went out on Tommy Rogers’ boat ( the shop owner ), and fished for about ten hours. Pertti livened things up early by hooking a 5 ft bronze whaler shark. Nobody was in a real hurry to gaff it and when it finally came onto the boat you can imagine it didn’t like it. All together, between the four of us we caught 3 dhufish ( biggest 20lb-will tell you the story in a minute ), 1 shark, 2 black-arse cod and 1 queen snapper. Not a bad effort eh? The story about the 20lb dhufish is quite amazing. We had come close to North Point and our skipper ( Ian Bremner- another local teacher ) was fishing for bait to put in his crayfish pots. He had a little boat rod, 20lb line and a bream hook no bigger than a No.6. Anyway, up until this time we had caught only two fish so you can imagine we weren’t giving him a very hard time. Considering we were fishing with 100-150lb handlines we were laughing at him every time he pulled up a rock cod, wrasse or parrot fish. By the time he had caught about twenty of these he was politely letting us know that the skipper now had the most fish in the boat, however, Pertti was still claiming victory for the size of the shark while I was claiming victory on a quality basis thanks to my dhufish. Soon after, Ian’s little boat rod starts to bend over double and he reckons he’s got something decent. We’re all giving him heaps claiming he will break the parrot fish record with this one. Nobody was paying much attention to him until he asked someone to grab the gaff because he had a dhuie. We were stunned! When it came onto the boat we could see that it had swallowed the hook and it had got caught in it’s guts. Ian, in his nonchalant manner, immediately pointed out that he was now winning on quality and number of fish. We all remained silent. If he had used any lighter line it would have been a chance for the record books I reckon.”
Great times, great memories, great people!
P.S. Thanks to Keighley Bremner for providing the attached photo of Ian.