Fishing For Noobs (Like Me)

Ruby's catch

all of us

samseng fish

As things are often such, i couldn't post the fishing trip yesterday, with memories fresh in my mind and my face gleefully red from sunburn (my reflection today tells me i'm looking more and more like an Iban with a darkened face - the hilarity of it all)

It was lovely - well, most of it was. If i had been fishing by myself, i'd probably be bored to tears, but the company of many (and jokes galore - more on that later) was too much to not have fun. The waits, especially some parts when the fish continously eat my bait and leave my hook, was frustrating, but the moments of tension when the rod curved in response to a nibbling fish wasn't. Lovely, lovely stuff, fishing - even though i caught 1 fish, while my sister several times younger than me caught 6 - 2nd highest amongst us *rolls eyes*

I reached Church at about 8.30 in the morning, lepaking around with Jason and his cousin, Brendan. Then (if i tell you every single detail you'd be bored to tears, too) we made off for the farm at about 9, with me squeezing in the back of a van and wondering why i let other people enjoy my iPod. The breeze was cool, the skies were clear - it looked perfect. Well the skied-were-clear part wasn't exactly, coz that'll mean that the unforgiving Malaysian sun was burning from above.

The fishing ponds were muddy and the first impression of the place wasn't anything nice. It smelled like my dog, which i had not bathed for two weeks, and the flies were having the time of their lives with the bait we made later on.

I didn't mind at all.

So then we put our stuff down and started readying our equipment. It took about a half hour before i got help to string mine, me being a newbie in everything concerning a rod. And then i learnt how to cast, mostly from watching other people casting theirs. Aaron's advice on fishing was simple but perfectly understandable: "1, hook. 2, hook. 3? HOOK!"

Fishing hooks were not something you wanted under your skin. They tore and made a lot of blood, as proved several minutes later, since a hook my little sister used went right through the roof of a catfish's mouth and out through the eye. By the time i used the pliers to extract it, the eye was hanging out.

And then there was that samseng (gangster) patin (local name for a type of fish) that pulled Aaron's rod into the water. We thought all was lost.

"I saw my rod flash before me eyes!" he wailed. Minutes later, God bless, Elaine got a fish, which turned out to be Aaron's rod, which was still connected to the samseng fish. We quickly reeled it in, and then grabbed the water-soaked rod, and started to pull. It got away. Then, a little later, Aaron got his revenge by pulling it in. Huge fish, it was.

That should be about it. Course, there still was that time when all of us started yelling "Howie Day!" into the water, just because me and Amanda managed to catch fish right after we talked about him (i was singing She Says to the water), but i'm running out of online time, as i probably stink of my dog. Just gave her a bath and even my skin is screaming for a shower. Oh well.

Photos courtesy of Ruby Chan, and her marvelous ability to upload photos into Frenster. ;þ