Let me revive an old thread...
Beginning of the year late one evening, Darius decided that I have neglected his passion for fishing way too long and that I have to take him to the river the next day. One of his demands was that he needs to catch a barbel as they are “cool”. After a frantic late night stock check, frog and cricket hunt, we headed to our favorite spot. (Quick confession all frogs were used to frighten mom into a new blood group and never joined us on the trip)
I baited up 2 rods for Darius, and one for myself. And it was not 2 minutes until he landed a barbel. A small one but still it made his day. There after he caught fish one after the other all muddies and yellows ranging from 500g to almost 2kg. My rod only managed to hook a small yellow that wanted to eat a bollie that was bigger than its head.
After a nice days fishing we packed up and I asked him to reel in all the lines. He picked up my rod and said “Pappa dit sit vas...” and I had to look on as he was battling a huge fish on my rod! After a nice battle he managed to bring the fish to the side, but battled to bring it to the net. Then under difficult circumstances, I managed to drop the fish back into the water, uttering some expressive words. This resulted into a phone call to his mom complaining about me being an incapable dad using bad words in front of his innocent son.
The fish must have been 8Kg+ and it will haunt me and him until he catches a bigger one. But this year I will make time and effort to take UA's best angler fisherman, fishing and I will also do my utmost not to drop his trophy fish back into the water without pictures and a weighing it first... on the bright side the fish does grow each time he retells the story to his mom.
Some photos:
