Day-o, day-ay-ay-o, daylight come and me wan’ go home
Why the Banana Boat song? Watch this space.
Cicadas screamed, so time to take that fly pattern for a swim. In retrospect there were some wonderful positives—beautiful day, a cool walk in lovely lakeside forest, birds singing and later we even found a koura, Fifteen centimetres from claws to tail but from the outset Murphy had nasty tricks up his slimy sleeve.
Cameron arrived on time to find me tearing my hair out; the key to the trailer coupling lock was missing, but being resourceful I said, “Plan B will be a walking stalk around the lake margins.”
So off we went up the valley, then BANG, one of our feathered friends bounced off the windscreen into oblivion. Hate that.
The lake cheered us up, briefly! Beautiful conditions but lots of fizz boats and jet skis breaking the 5 knot limit. Hate that as well. Their wash made it very hard to scan the water, then next moment Cameron’s fly somehow pierced his jersey and stuck in his trousers. Must’ve looked odd as we did an extrication.
Blow this we thought, so walked back to the car through the trees facilitating thoughts of Plan C—the Arnold River. It looked good, cicadas still sang, and being very low we were able to walk up the river outside the willows and search the runs. Nothing! So we bush-bashed away from the water and I got stuck in some mud over my boots, up my shins and only got out with a strong helping hand from Cameron. Could’ve been there forever and become a skeleton holding a rod.
Back at the car for some lunchtime fruit, where I found my plum was nearly fermented in the heat, so a local weka got that. We canvassed reasons why our luck was so low and came to the conclusion it was bananas. Yes, I took one as part of my lunch. Silly me, of course that was the reason for our disastrous day. Cameron cogitated aloud on more of our mayhem—we’d tied our lines together on a back cast, he got his line and hook caught in the rear view mirror getting his rod out of the car and I’d snapped my fly off in the bushes.
Then came Plan D—the Grey River, so I drove right past the turnoff didn’t I? Backtracked and went looking at the streams and rivers flowing into the Grey to perhaps find some cicada feasting fish. Too bad the streams were all low and almost dry. OK let’s go to another couple of rivers up there that could be good. First one had someone already in situ so we continued, turning off onto another road I knew and up many kilometres to end in a property that said,
“Multiple Hazard area no entry”—sigh!
Ah but I had Plan E, which was another bush-bash—to no avail. Cameron grasped a blackberry, albeit very briefly and we almost got lost.
Plan F was a trip to ‘Spot X,’ well known by another fishing mate, we’ll call him Garth. Here there was more wind blowing than he can conjure up after a night on the Speights Light! Got to the Pike River turnoff, another disaster, turned round and headed west again.
Plan G had to be summoned up. Gee I wanna’ go home—see the intro.
