Feeding time

I have never been fishing in my life...until today. After speeding across the beautifully still lake (oh what a difference to choppy ocean) and slowly motoring along the fringes of the vegetation watching great white egrets lifting their wings and flapping away, cormorants fishing and caiman calmly eyeing our approach, we stopped in a bay and I was handed a cane rod with a line attached, and a chunk of meat on the end.

Well if you´re gonna fish in Brazil it might as well be for piranha right?!

"If you feel a nibble, flick the rod up" was apparently all I needed to know. I did point out that if, when I flicked the rod up, it did actually rise with a piranha on the end of the line then I´d probably scream!

It wasn´t long before I did feel a tug, and not long after that I was pretty adept at feeding the fish(!)*. Not quite the point, and so on something like my sixth bit of meat I vowed to call it a day, but I took the advice to let the hook sink lower, and on my next flick...there he was...I caught a piranha!** Can´t say he was very big, but man that´s an impressive row of teeth.

After that we pootled off, continuing to see plenty of beautiful birds, absolutely no capybara, and a pretty nice sunset. Not bad for day´s work ;)


Postscript: No, I didn´t bring the piranha back for dinner. He really was pretty small, so when we reached land, Marcus stuck him on the end of a pole and asked a passing caiman if he fancied a free dinner. He teased him once by moving the pole as this incredible animal jumped up nearly a metre out of the water for it, but the second time was quite decisive...the caiman took half the pole too!


*Usually I would whip the bait out of the water a number of times first, before eventually losing it to some sneaky wee bugger.
**Now there´s a phrase I never imagined saying.***
***Oh, and I didn´t scream.