Be The Jam

Fishing part 2 was promised, as I recall, to come tomorrow. It is now the day after tomorrow which somewhat undermines the old adage that tomorrow never comes.

It's a good thing that there is still part 2 of fishing to talk about as absolutely nothing interesting has happened to me over the past couple of days. All I have done is waste my time on Facebook and go to work. There is though one piece of exciting news, so far this month the sale of advertising on this site has raised the dizzying amount of $1.45! It's first class travel for me from now on that's for sure.

One thing that I have forgotten to work on recently is the Travel Guide part of this site - if anyone is tempted to write anything please do, to get you in the mood have a look at this  http://bethejam.squarespace.com/zimbabwe-journal/ I'll have to ask Tom if he will write some more stuff.

Right, fishing

Part 2.

The plan was to learn how to fish with minimal equipment and so we set off after a relaxed breakfast sat in the dappled shade of the woods to find a river. Finding a river I was soon to discover is kind of key to fishing, lakes and the sea are also useful and even on occasion fishing can occur through a suitable hole in a sheet of ice. The Amazon is not well known for being furnished with either seas or ice and there were no lakes in the vicinity so we went and found a river, presented the appropriate licence (not strictly necessary in the jungle) and set about our business. The first thing to note is that there was no sign of fish, at all. Apparently this is unusual, normally they are swimming about like crazy, eating and being eaten and rising with great regularity. Rising for all you land lubbers out there is coming to the surface, probably to eat things floating on it, us fishermen have terms for everything you see; bottom (no smirking at the back) means the bottom of the river and, um, well there are lots of terms. Anyway, we got to a suitable spot on the bank, commented on the lack of fish and Patrick set about instructing me on the business with the line and the hooks and the floats and things. It's all quite complicated, I'd had images of a lazy Tom Sawyer type day lying on the bank with a bit of string tied to my big toe and a hat pulled over my face shading me from the sun. Not a bit of it. First there was the tying everything to the string in the right order and then there was the issue of getting the line (that's another term, it's called fishing line not string) into the river. Apparently it is easier with a rod. without a rod the line tends to get wrapped around things, trees, legs thumbs, sticks rather more often than would appear to be necessary. Patrick displayed a lot of patience, a lot more than I would have and after an hour so we decided that the fish had fled the scene and decided to try elsewhere.

Elsewhere turned out to be a bridge, this allowed us to dangle the line straight down unimpeded by anything and it also went to show that fish do indeed like the shade as Patrick caught two Chub. We were intending to catch Perch so that we could do the whole survival thing and have them for supper and test the "fresh water fish taste like mud theory" out for ourselves. Chub though are so full of bones as to make them so unpleasant as to be not worth eating unless one really is in a survival situation so we through them back. In the end Patrick went home and I ate toast and marmite next to the fire and digested what I had learnt. I'm now confident that should the need arise I know enough to go fishing and maybe even catch something. From what I read the most likely thing to catch in South American rivers is Piranha, they are very bony and allegedly taste like mud. I suspect that after a year I will be very good at catching them and sick of eating them.