Swamp People

Took a vacation to Lake Banguelwu for the Easter Holiday to try to catch the all elusive Tiger Fish. These fish have teeth so sharp that you have to use steel leaders to catch them and they grow bigger than 25 pounds. After a twelve hour transport ride on busses, mini busses, and the back of pick up trucks we finally reached the lake. Upon arrival, my traveling companion, and expert fishing guide (Jeremy) had a fever and a nasty case of ring worm. We checked into the first guest house that we found and crashed for the night.

In the morning Jeremy was still not feeling well, so I headed off to the beach on my own. It was a beautiful white sand beach with papaya trees and lounge chairs all around. I felt like I was on a tropical island. I didn't build up the guts to touch the water however. The local stories about man eating crocodiles detured me. After a rough day at the beach I spent the afternoon hunting for a boat to take us fishing. I found a guy who had a 10 horse power Johnson outboard motor and a banana boat and the plans were set for fishing.

The next day Jeremy still wasn't feeling well, so we postponed our boat trip for a day and spent the day fishing from the beach. On the third day we were finally out on the boat. We started off around 9:00 AM and after driving, stalling, and sputtering our way across the lake for about 3 hours we asked our driver where the Tiger fish were. He stopped the engine and said they were "here." After some arguing we convinced him to keep driving into the swamps, which is where we found the swamp people. These people literally live on the swamps in grass houses that they rebuild according to the water level. They use dug out logs as canoes and home made nets for fishing. We decided that one of these guys would be perfect as our Tiger fishing guide. We loaded one of them in our boat and were off to hook the big ones.

After driving for about another hour back into the swamps we arrived at the secret spot where the Tiger fish lived. I cracked a beer and cast my line as our driver and guide acted as our human troll motor. About half way through my third beer, my line suddenly went zipping out faster than I have ever seen line go out. I tightened the drag and started to real in what I was sure was a monsterous Tiger. Unfortunately, the only rod I could find looked like one of those Snoopy reels that you buy at Toys R Us, and my line was only 8 pound tess. My line snapped and the fight was over as quick as it had started.

There was no action on our lines for the rest of the day and we arrived back in town in the dark with no fish. The locals were expecting much better results from the Mizungu visitors and were thoroughly disapointed to hear that we were skunked. I spent the next day relaxing on the beach and finally managed to catch two of the world's smallest bream from the shore before it got dark.

The next day our bus broke down on the way to Lusaka, we had another twelve hour transport day. This time mashed in the fetile position in the back of a flat bed truck freezing my arse off between a breast feeding Bamaayo and a sack of potatoes. We finally got to the training center around mid night, totally exhausted, but with some great fish stories to tell.

I will try to blog again before I leave for the States, but if I don't get the chance I will be in California from June 22 to July 10. Then in New York from July 10 to July 18. Hope to see you all then.