Night Fishing

Last Saturday night I was nicely settled with a book when two of my buds, K and R called up saying they were going fishing and were picking me up too. So half and hour later I was in back of the K Mobile and heading towards our usual place.

The “Usual” place is a small park on the banks of a river, where there is an unfinished pavilion of sorts with steps leading down to the water. I say unfinished because I think the initial plan was to have a roof over the thing, but I guess they ran out of money before that. Now there are only some concrete pillars standing there. The place is cool, most of the time deserted at night, but with lights for illumination. This is where we normally end up when we want to throw back a few beers and just chill.

When I say river, it is not your clear-blue-water, can-drink-straight-out-of-it sort of river. It runs through a city so it’s basically brown in color, and while you can drink out of it, you’d better be prepared to stay inside the loo for a couple of days. However there’s plenty of fish in it. Whenever we are chilling out here, we see local fishermen out on boats, who catch loads of fish, and some even put lines from the bank and goes home with a bag load for dinner. So we thought we’d also try our luck at it.

I have gone fishing with my dad a couple of times when I was small, but never caught a thing, not even a malnourished sprat. The only things that got caught were some twigs. That kind of put me off the whole fishing experience. R on the other hand has some experience at it. So armed with some lines and hooks, no rods mind you, we tried our luck that night. For bait we used this Barnacle like critter with a conical shell that gets washed up on shore during low tide. I have no idea what they are called though. You have to crack the shells to get the critter out of it.

With hooks thus baited we cast out the lines and waited. We opened up a couple of beers and ate some munchies. After about ten minutes or so what do I see? My line has a bite on it. Reel it in and there is an unlucky bugger attached to it. My first ever fish, in a life time. Ok it wasn’t a big one, but a small fry the size of my finger, but hey it’s still a fish ain’t it? Oddly enough, before I could celebrate, it started to rain. You think maybe someone was trying to send us a message? Hmm I wonder…

Anyway when the rain settled down we continued with renewed excitement. Within another half hour or so R managed to catch two more. We thought we were in for a big haul. Unfortunately that never happened. After nearly five hours of standing in water, what do we have to show for it? Three measly fish no bigger than your fingers and a crab, which R found hiding in an old tire. The annoying part was that there were plenty of fish, some were even pecking at our legs and jumping out of the water, but they weren’t just taking the bait. They have gotten smart. I swear I could hear them laughing as we got out of the water. Darn critters…

After awhile we got fed up with it and around one o’clock Sunday morning, we headed back home. Ah but we are not deterred. We will be back, with a rod next time, and maybe try our luck from the bridge. You wait and see, we’ll get you yet…

What happened to the fish we caught? Well they weren’t even worth to make a soup out of it, so we gave them to a cat that hangs around the park. Lucky kitty had a right royal dinner that night. All three disappeared inside its tummy in less than a minute. As for the crab, he went back into the water, where he must be regaling his buddies with his adventures.

I learned a valuable lesson from this little expedition? Thank god for supermarkets :D. I don’t think I’ll be able to catch anything even if my life depended on it. There must be some kind of art to it, privy only to the fisher-folk or, everybody else except me…