The Dreaded First Night Burnout

There is a mysterious and dangerous ritual that takes place at the beginning of just about every fishing trip.

The excitement of what’s about to happen, mixed with the trip “supplies,” (enough liquor to knock out several herds of Rhinos) mates freed from the usual constraints of life and hell bent on having a good time. These are the key ingredients, but mix in a little boredom and frustration that the trip hasn’t quite got under way and you have all the ingredients for First Night Burnout.

Who among you has not greedily eyed the trip’s liquor supply early on that first night and woken up the next morning wishing you hadn’t?

A First Night Burnout session might start with getting fishing tackle prepared or cooking up a feed. Note: The only green thing that should be ingested during a blokes’ fishing trip comes in bottles “World’s Best Beer” somewhere on the label.

Let’s say the evening starts with a knot tying session, lubricated by a few beers. Just a few, mind. At some time during this innocent early stage of the night there will be a dislocation in the space time continuum.

It sneaks up on you so stealthily that one minute its 9pm, you blink and it's 3am. There is rum in your glass and everyone is talkin’ shorthand.
Eventually someone will say something like “bejasis, look at the time.”

A glance at watches and clocks will show the little hand pointing to numbers like 3 and 4 and there will be a scramble for bunks as people realise there are only a few hours left before they have to be bright eyed & bushy-tailed for Day One of the trip.
But they won’t be BB&BT.

Invariably the first day of a fishing trip is clouded in pain, bloat, thirst and clumsiness. This is the inevitable result of First Night Burnout.
I’ve experienced several First Night Burnouts (although it might be more). Memorable ones.

Perhaps the most memorable took place during the infamous Cooks Beach Midwinter, a mates’ fishing competition that has already yielded the material for several of these columns.

No wonder it’s infamous! We’d arrived early and headed out for a quick fish. As we processed the snapper under the campground’s lean-to filleting area it poured with freezing cold rain and someone offered up a glass of drambiue.

The result was catastrophic. That dram tasted so good we just kept on going until a bottle and half of that – plus a wide assortment of other liquors – had been consumed and it was suddenly the wee small ours of the morning. Classic First Night Burnout.

I was pretty crook the next day, but managed to catch a fish. It’s just that my fishing mate, John managed to catch about 15.

At one stage I tried to quell the dancing demons in my stomach with a couple of slices of bacon and egg pie but that simply turned my gut into the Wall of Death sideshow ride from the Easter Show – the one were two motorcycles scorch round a vertical cylinder at ever increasing speed.

Then there are the times when First Night Burnout leaves you with very little chance to sleep before you are due to go fishing. One of these occurred at Omaha, shortly after a mate found a brand spanking new bottle of Cointreau in the liquor cupboard. I didn’t even know we had a liquor cupboard.

What fun it was to light the wineglass size servings we dished out to ourselves, watch the blue flame shimmer over the surface, then knock back the warmed liquid.

Until we realised that the bloke we were going fishing with would already be on his way down State Highway 1, boat in tow, from Wellsford. Desperately we tried to cram in some sleep but it could only be crash and burn material when our mate turned up at 6am ready to hit the water only to find the rest of us crawling around on all fours searching for a grave to fall into.

It was a slow day on the boat that day and no lovely refreshing ale at midday could make things any better. Not a lot said either.

These are just two insignificant examples in a long string of unfortunate First Night Burnouts. I’ve suffered first day hangovers snapper fishing, marlin fishing, in fishing competitions, on big boats and small.

There seems to be no way round First Night Burnout – at least until we decide that a couple of days of hard-out fishing with mates is not fun and is not something to look forward to with a burning desire. Without the excitement and the “not quite there” frustration, there will be no First Night Burnout.

I have had a taste of that day. I went away for three days with guys who didn’t drink, who went to bed early (and who brought along green things they called food and actually ate them!)

Fishing trips have never been so dull…