The eerie morning a UFO caught me out

FISHY TALES

FORGET the Bermuda Triangle where mysterious UFO sightings occur. This strange encounter was fishing on a Queensland river bank.

Until I witnessed that eerie experience, I was sceptical about unidentified flying objects.

The hotpot was along the rocky river banks of the Burrum River, near Maryborough.

It was a location I regularly fished for large bream during the winter months.

Although chilly late at night, it was a routine I enjoyed immensely. Rug up, take some mullet gut or freshly caught hardyheads and set up on the water's edge, close to where the river flows into Hervey Bay.

With no-one around, it was a pleasant place to fish.

However, on this particularly calm and tranquil angling outing, something weird happened.

It was the early hours of Sunday morning some years ago when I first witnessed a UFO.

"It'' arrived about 2am and cruised around the Hervey Bay skies as I tried to get a fix on the object.

It was freakish.

As I continued to sit on the rocks waiting for my next bream to bite, my eyes were locked on the unknown aerial intruder.

It was too bright to be a star and it was moving in and out of view.

After briefly disappearing out to sea, "it'' would re-appear again, casting a strange shadow over the moonlit water.

Despite the increasing cold, I wasn't hallucinating from sipping rum earlier or slurping on some port to warm up the insides.

And I certainly wasn't tired, being on holidays and having an afternoon snooze to prepare for the long night of fishing.

After ending my session with the sun about to come up, I shared the experience with my family holidaying in a riverfront house close to where I was fishing.

They too were understandably sceptical about my early morning tale.

But it was true.

My uncle Len from Sydney had a keen interest in astronomy so attempted to solve the mystery.

His first guess was it may have been the planet Mars.

But I countered with the responses: "Does Mars hover in and out of one's sight? and "is Mars blue in colour?''

As a compromise, I offered to wake everyone up the next time I saw the UFO.

Sure enough, at exactly the same time and same spot the next morning "it'' returned.

With goosebumps bigger than the mosquitoes biting me, I woke up my family.

But even with the help of a pair of binoculars, we couldn't get a clearer look at the object.

My wise dad offered his welcome support by saying he'd seen blue lights under the unknown object. That sank the Mars theory.

The next morning I just had to find out what it was.

But after talking to Burrum Heads residents at the main shopping centre and bait shop, I was none the wiser.

All I got were more guesses - a weather balloon, satellite, military aircraft?

I don't know a lot about weather balloons but I suspect they don't hover in and out across a large tract of ocean water the way this object did.

And if it was an aircraft of some sort, it had incredible maneuverability.

So the mystery remains to this day.

I love just about everything about fishing. But what you see and experience caps it all.

This article is part of the Queensland Times Fishy Tales series, a collection of stories about unusual or exceptional fishing adventures.