Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Fishing in Indian Waters

Fishing in Indian Waters

    Where are these Indian Waters? Not in Montana, Colorado, Utah, or New Mexico. Those are Native American Waters. These are in India of course. Why has it taken 522 years to correct Christopher's screw-up. If he'd be even marginally aware he'd have noticed that the natives he encountered did not have spices for sale, spice factories, advanced information technology degrees, silk saris, or curry. This just scratches the surface of the misunderstandings North Americanos have about India and Indians. As Fred Miller and I found out we don't know much about fishing there either.
     We were totally prepared. 
 We had Kingfisher Beer, Scotch, Bourbon, and local white wine. 
We had a luxury sleep in boat with air conditioning and a live in chef.

We had a captain that knew the local waters.
We had fine bamboo rods. Well maybe not that fine but it was what the Kerala's were fishing. 
We knew there were fish because the water snakes showed us a catch.
And the market displayed obviously recently caught fish. 
We had fine demonstrations of technique including landing but the size of the fish were not up to Fred's standards. We were unfamiliar with the  "ball of bread" fly but we tried some streamers, nymphs, midges, and dries. 
Nada.

Aah. They are using nets. Little ones and
big ones counter balance by a string of rocks.

So Fred tried getting the swing of fishing with a big net. Nada. 
Oh well. We came back enlightened on the culture but in the dark on catching.