Was Victoria wrong to ban fishers from the water?

Yes, I went fishing at the weekend. It’s our first day back after almost eight weeks of severe COVID-19 lockdown where Victoria stood alone in banning shore- and water-based fishing as part of some of the most severe pandemic lockdowns throughout Australia.

After weeks of gazing jealously at social media feeds showing everyone else surviving the new social distancing norm with a feed of fish, it was time to head out and wet a line.

I’d spent my time in lockdown wisely. Both fuel tanks were emptied into lawnmowers – the grass continues to grow in autumn – and stored, and several small running improvements were made to the boat, namely a pair of stainless steel snapper racks that double the number of rod holders.

Bringing the boat out of government-imposed hibernation was a slow process, removing the trickle charger I’d hard-wired into the battery when the lockdown was imposed, sorting and cleaning gear, checking expiry dates – I’ve since heard of police turning one boat back to shore because its flares were two months out of date – and re-rigging the rods.

The pre-dawn trip to Andersons Inlet, about 170km south-west of Melbourne, was stunning, skimming the edge of the Strzelecki Ranges as we negotiated patches of fog and wallabies scrambling the steep slopes on either side of the road.

South of the tiny settlement of Jumbunna the landscape opens up and our high vista reveals the sandy flats, prime dairying land running about 20 kilometres down to the sea. The lights of Inverloch, the gateway to the inlet, shine bright as the sun broaches the horizon to the east.

It’s an eerie landscape, with parts blanketed in strips of low-lying soft, white fog.

The boat ramp at Inverloch is all but deserted, a stark contrast to images of long queues of cars and boats at Melbourne ramps that flooded onto social media feeds in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions being eased only days earlier. Down one end, a single land-based angler is huddled inside his jacket, a rod resting on one of the jetty’s bollards.

There’s no wind. The sky is clear and it’s bitterly cold with the thermometer into single figures. The tide is just starting to run out, so we launch, park up next to the other two trailers – like the rest of the boat ramps in the state, launching and parking up is now free – jump aboard, set up the boat as we warm up the engine, and then motor out for a gutter that has yielded a good feed of whiting in the past.

Andersons inlet is very tidal with big, shallow sandbars creating a zig-zagging course to our fishing spot. Once there, there’s one other boat at the front of the gutter about 500 metres away, so we pick a spot on its trailing edge and drop the anchor.

The water is thick with brown slurry; something upstream has stirred up sediment that’s now being washed out to sea. Normally here you can see the bottom, but today it’s like looking through one of granddad’s longneck beer bottles.

It’s a cloudless day and as the sun climbs higher and we strip off outer shells of clothing that have kept out the cold, but now lock in the warmth.

The fishing is tough. The squid we’re using as bait is attracting lots of undersize flathead so we crack out he secret weapon, a slimy mackerel kept as bait from a previous trip out to Western Port Bay.

It works. In quick succession, we pull in two good-size east Australian salmon and a decent flathead, taking time to give the hairy eyeball to the guy on the kayak who’s noticed our berley basket and dropped in behind to cast across our stern. I even get a double hook-up of salmon, but both are undersized.

As the sun gets higher more boats filter in, setting themselves up around us. From one, the excited voice of a child fills the air as they pull in a flathead to open the account. Other murmurs drift across the water, peaking with excitement as someone hooks up.

Our mackerel is almost gone. Something has been shaking the line violently, taking the bait but not the hook.

We decide to spend another half an hour on the water before turning back for home. It’s a good decision; we’d come to Andersons Inlet to get a feed of whiting, and our last catch is a good-sized one.

The trip back in is almost on low tide. What were large expanses of water now become a maze of sandbars, and ignoring the channel markers is a dangerous shallow-water game. Even following the markers, the sounder’s depth alarm will occasionally ping – a sign that these channels are constantly on the move.

The jetty alongside the boat ramp is packed with people enjoying the sun and the outdoors. Heading back to the car is like negotiating the channels; I’m now having to zig-zag my way through people. More anglers have joined the bloke from this morning, and the ramp’s car park is now half-full.

Things go further downhill once the boat is back on the trailer and we’re filleting our catch on the jetty’s cleaning table. Everyone walking past the kill bucket stops and creeps up close for a look, asking the same “whaddijya catch” question. The new social distancing norms repeatedly drummed into us over the previous months don’t seem to apply when a fish is in the picture.

This first trip back after the COVID-19 lockdown made me realise I’d missed fishing more than I’d thought I would. However, was there a reason to ban Victoria’s community of more than 800,000 fishers from the water?

Given the weekend’s experience, I believe that the problem is not with fishing. Every angler I saw, on the water and off it, was being totally responsible in what will become the new social distancing normal for the foreseeable future. The problem, back on dry land, was all with other people.

Victoria was wrong to criminalise fishing.