Two hopefuls, one dog and the deep blue sea…

It looked so easy on TV……you put the line attached to the rod thingy in the water, wait a few minutes for the big tug, and when you feel it, you reel in your dinner!

what they do, apart from looking pretty) and negotiating the complicated knots that we were taught, with our semi-frozen fingers. With everything (sort-of) in place, we cut up the pilchards, which are smaller fish used for bait, and loaded a succulent looking piece onto the hook. Proud of our initial efforts, we cast the line into the water and waited. About an hour and several attempts later, we felt a tug! Excitedly, hubby started reeling in the catch and I braced myself, ready to help him with the huge fish. It soon became clear that instead of catching, we were the ones who were caught - on some reeds in the water.

After untangling our line from the reeds, hubby tried another tactic. He put the head end of the pilchard onto the hook, explaining patiently and convincingly to me that the fish out there may look into the eyes of our bait fish, fall madly in love, get hooked, and then we could reel it in. This sounded perfectly logical to my frozen brain, so we gave it another half an hour with this technique.

No luck. Hubby’s next tactic was to use the tail end of the pilchard. Apparently, any fish seeing another fish’s tail swishing at him would become furious and would want to take a big bite out of that cheeky fish. While this explanation somehow did not seem steeped in logic, I accepted it, bearing in mind that as a man, his pride rested on catching a fish. Aside from the inherent hunter/gatherer instinct, my ever-optimistic hubby had insisted that I pack the ingredients for two different types of marinade for the many fish that he was planning on catching. After all, there would be nothing worse than having lots of fish and no spices, right…..?

BY DEEPA GOPINATH

A few weeks ago, hubby and I decided that it was time for a mini-break. Our last holiday over Christmas was but a distant, fading memory and we decided it was time to escape from the inner-city madness and go coastal for a couple of days. The four-legged member of our family, Cookie the stumpy little Jack Russell Terrier, expressed his desire to join us. Actually, Cookie probably doesn’t know what a holiday is per se, but we decided it was about time he was introduced to that incredible thing - the beach. So after securing some dog-friendly accommodation, arguing over and finally deciding on which car to take, and packing the boot full of both human and canine delicacies, we headed off to Greenwell Point at the south coast of NSW.

One of our objectives on this trip was to try a spot of fishing. It looked so easy on TV……you put the line attached to the rod thingy in the water, wait a few minutes for the big tug, and when you feel it, you reel in your dinner! Fool-proof! We arrived in Greenwell Point in the evening and stayed at Angler’s Rest, partly chosen for its highly inspirational and appropriate name. As you can imagine, being brought up in south Indian Brahmin families, neither of us were raised to be knowledgeable and adept in the art of fishing. Personally, my domestic education consisted of how to make authentic rasam and Rangoli Drawing 101, among other similarly indoors-y things. With this in mind, the next morning all three of us excitedly trooped off to the local service station, apparently the place to go for all things fishing in Greenwell Point. Despite being told that it was not possible to hire a rod, with grand dreams of 2kg salmon and sea bass, we stuck with the plan and invested in a bright red (because anything that is red goes faster) fishing rod instead. Assuming some basic knowledge, the nice service station owner proceeded to talk to us about tides, species of fish, deep sea vs. river fishing, etc. Our bewildered faces soon gave away the plot, and he switched over to an Idiot’s Guide explanation of how to get started.

Aside from the inherent hunter/ gatherer instinct, my ever-optimistic hubby had insisted that I pack the ingredients for two different types of marinade for the many fish that he was planning on catching.

So $60 later, armed with basic equipment and even more basic knowledge, we headed down to the water’s edge and claimed a small jetty to try our hand at this ‘sport’. The best part of the first half hour was spent loading the line onto the rod (not as easy as the professionals make it look), working out where the sinkers and the swivel go (still not quite sure

Two hours on, a little more frozen, still fishless and having donated a few hooks to the reeds, we decided to call it quits. To add to our humiliation, we realised that there were chunks of meat missing from the piece of pilchard that we had been using as bait. Evidently, the fish were out there, but what we saw as a fishing expedition, they saw as feeding time! And so it was that the three of us trudged into the local fish shop with heads hanging low and tails (both literal and metaphoical) between legs to buy some fish fillets for dinner. And what was Cookie doing all this time? Being the ever obedient man’s best friend, he sat patiently on the jetty with us, shivering silently and probably wondering why these humans were sitting in the cold for hours holding that ridiculous looking stick, when all three of us could be happily curled up on the couch in front of the heater. Actually, he was the only one who was rewarded during this whole experience, although it’s a sad day when most of the bait ends up as the dog’s dinner!