Ray’s Long time gone fishing

Andrew Mathieson
WHEN knocking on Ray Long’s door, the name synonymous with rods and reels around Geelong has put up the sign he’s gone fishing.
To Queensland, that is.
Turning his back on the many piers and deep waters he fished locally for seven decades, Ray’s quick to remark: “What’s here for a sure angler or an old bloke like me is rubbish.”
It’s an unexpected pronouncement for a man who’s made a living selling bait and tackle to generations of local anglers.
But, to Ray, heading up far north instead to catch quality bream is, in comparison, like shooting fish in a barrel.
Ray travels up for a month and counts about 400 catches at a time – and most he lets go.
But there’s something fishy when most bream have swum away from the Geelong region’s estuaries, he reckons.
But before letting fly at fishing authorities, Ray sounds a warning.
“I’m very controversial,” he grins.
As a boy growing up near the Barwon River at Chilwell, Ray would walk straight down Latrobe Terrace to a drain where 14 feet (4.2 metres) of water hovered over a sandbank.
That same spot is now lucky to be four-foot deep these days.
“The whole river has changed,” Ray bemoans.
“We’re experts at buggering things up.”
Ray’s adamant that breaks, or weirs, which stop tidal saltwater flowing into urban Geelong, are behind the decline in bream numbers.
Ray’s favourite pursuit was always rock fishing.
He can’t stop talking about Black Rock and the hype of activity for feeds of snapper there.
But his ageing legs are consigning him to firmer ground.
“I can’t duck quick enough or run back,” he says of the waves that regularly lash the rocky outcrop between Breamlea and Barwon Heads.
Ray then talks about the “challenge” of catching a fish, not knowing whether he’ll catch an esky-full or go home to a tin of baked beans.
“The sea is different every day,” Ray explains.
“You could get your head blown off and next day you could catch the best snapper and think it’s the greatest day.”
Ray’s fishing stocks have their origins back a few generations since he cast a line aged just six or seven.
His English grandfather was the first Long to fish Geelong’s waters.
Ray’s father was a “great” fisherman and son Brian, who writes the Independent’s On The Bite column, also rates as “pretty good”.
Reminders of the fishing family’s past are found inside Ray’s back shed at his Herne Hill home.
Lined up against the walls, he boasts hundreds of rods and reels.
The collection includes wooden reels dating back to the 1800s, the odd rusting hook and thousands of lures.
They are stored away for keep’s sake.
“Brian will probably throw them out one day,” Ray jokes, “so I’m not looking forward to when I die.”
But when Ray hits the water he pulls out the latest products from the Manifold Heights shopfront that bears his name.
Fishing, he says, is not just about the latest lightweight graphite rods.
“I can still go down with an old rod and reel and have as much chance of catching a fish as I could with a new one,” he says.
“It’s not what’s on top, it’s what’s under the water with the bait or lures that you use.”
Ray Long Tackle World came to fruition in 1969 when he quit the building industry.
His last job was working on Belmont’s Kmart for Geelong’s biggest builder in the day, JC Taylor and Son.
At age 39, Ray needed a breather.
“So I started the business in my backyard selling fishing tackle,” he recalls.
“Lucky I had good neighbours and we all had a lot of fun back then.
“I worked for six years in the backyard and, when Brian left school, I said to him ‘We’ll get a shop’.”
Now fishing has finally become a pastime again rather than.
Brian takes credit, saying he told his 80-year-old dad to put his feet up.
Ray abruptly tells a different story.
“No, no. I decided it was time I should get out of their way because I reckon I was getting a bit slow and was a bloody nuisance,” he grins.