Inventive fishing

I saw this video today:


Another played after it:


And I thought....I really liked that first one.

Klaus has his ballerina stance down and the flamboyance of a bejeweled flamingo...

That kind of annoys me.

The first one sent me back a couple of years.

My wife and I went down to Guatemala. We stayed awhile on Lake Atitlan. Beautiful place. Lots of towns around the lake you can get to by way of boat taxis. Everything is cheap as hell by American standards.

I didn't bring a rod, but I did get out on the lake in a kayak a few times. What I saw was quite amazing. Lots of people on the shores hand casting. They had line wrapped around an empty plastic bottle with just a jig head and a rubber worm attached. I watched them pulling in fish. Watched their technique. It was great.

While waiting on the boat dock for a water taxi, I noticed one of those bottles that the workers of the hotel leave stuffed into the pipe on the dock. Just something to pass the time while waiting for a taxi. We had a long wait one day, so I started trying to figure out how to hand cast with this bottle, line, and jig. It was definitely a lot harder than it looked, but eventually I got some distance from the dock. Even caught a few fish.

I tried, the next day, to actually find a fishing rod of any sort in two different towns. No luck. Instead, I went to the hardware store and bought a couple of screw eyes. The next day I found a piece of bamboo and made myself the clunkiest rod ever. Tried it out on the dock and even managed to catch a couple fish with it. Albeit, the hand fishing was easier.

Fishing is fun. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. Jumping back to the videos, I'd much rather go fishing with the kid in the first one.....