Fishing

     Tonight I went fishing at Ross River with a couple of the new Aussie friends that I made today. One of them, Tim, an extremely ambitious, outdoorsy type was the instigator of the nocturnal adventure. I just happen to be in the kitchen at the time that he was leaving and he asked me if I'd like to go fishing. I was in a spontaneous mood as usual so I said yes.

     Now, I haven't been fishing in ages so I was quite horrid at it. I think the last time I went fishing was probably when I was about 15. I never really cared for the sport all that much when I was younger, but I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I could never sit still and hated getting my hands dirty. I've gotten over both of those things, so it wasn't all that bad. I did have to re-learn how to do everything though.

     The three of us sat on some rocks near the water and got started. Some time went by and I was still having difficulty just getting my rod ready. Lucky for me, after a while Tim saw how much trouble I was having with the equipment and he decided to lend a friendly hand. It probably would have taken me a good 20 minutes to get ready, but he got me all set up in less than 60 seconds. Once I got my line out in the water the "fun" began. I didn't get any bites right away, but I did manage to snag my line on something within about 3 minutes. It got so stuck that we had to break the line and start all over again. I cast the line back out and ended up nailing a few things, but the line would break literally every time I tried to bring the catch in. It got to the point where I just gave the rod to Tim whenever I had something on the line. I felt a bit useless at that point.

     We were able to catch a few things eventually. We didn't catch much in the way of fish, but we did catch several eels. I guess that's what you get for fishing at night. Personally, I thought that it was pretty cool because I'd never really seen eels in the wild before, but it did get rather tiresome after the fourth one. The problem with catching eels is that you can't do much with them if you keep them and letting them go is never that easy unless you cut the line and let them have the hook. With a bit of teamwork we were able to successfully release the hook from one of the eels. At around 10:45-11:00 we were sick of catching eels and called it quits.

     I'm not so sure how much I actually enjoyed the fishing part of this venture, but I did quite like being outdoors on a beautiful, full moon night. It was very peaceful. The 3 of us chatted about nothing for most of the time. It was nice.