FISH AND PICS
1) A bontebok on table mountain, a rare antelope hunted to near-death because they were too dumb to run away
2- the child of my landlords
3- An informal settlement, or "township" in Mitchell's plain
4- part of our catch (read below)
5- fishing boat in Kalk Bay harbor
Despite fate's best hindering efforts, I finally got to go boat-fishing, with some YMCA guys and their buddies. Some commercial fisherman have decided that it's advantageous to take visitors along for cash, so local anglers now have a chance to fish with the big boys, in ludicriously small boats. Things were fairly familiar from other boat-fishing trips... the blue of the ocean all around, the taste of salt, the smell of bait, the feel of thick handline through shamefully soft fingers and the sound of other passengers hurling over the side.
The oceans here are shark-infested from the bottom up, it seems. I caught the largest fish of the trip to be landed sucessfully, an irate, leg-sized sand shark. It flailed wildly in the boat, whipping its needle-like teeth around and wrapping its shockingly supple body around arms, waists, and lines, anything to prevent us from unhooking it and throwing it back. In the mid-depths, our fearless leader hooked the largest fish of the trip, a man-sized thresher shark. Thereafter he gave a truly expert preformance in "loosing all your line". And just to show us who was boss, a great white shark breached on the surface, making an enormosu splash and putting an immedate end to the "I could go for a swim" jokes.
The water is even more infested with hand sized bait fish, that school and swarm around the boat. It was fun, because we could literally catch them at will, throw them into a tub and then pull them out later to feed bigger fish. They were also annoying because they ate tremendous amounts of bait off the hook, but inbetween the sharks and the baitfish we still managed to catch a good number of eating fish. I got pretty outfished by the experts, but still went home with enough for a couple of good meals. Fishing rocks.
2 comments:
I am glad you finally found a computer that will let you upload pictures. But I dunno, that fish looks pretty small. You can definitely find bigger ones in Manitoba :)
Oohhhh... never insult the size of a man's fish. It makes us defensive.
The fish at my feet is probably about 5 lbs, the ones in the tub vary from less than 1 to about 4. You can find bigger ones in the ocean also... some of them we caught, but they were sharks which were released/escaped... same old story.
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