My life is a Ben Stiller movie I - Fishing

I always thought I had reasonable man-skills. Being bought up in and around the country, I'm a little rough around the edges to say the least. Generally I operate the majority of farm machinery, vehicles, tools and equipment with varying degrees of success but by and large give things a reasonable shot. Up until a few weeks ago I thought I was at least a fair to middling fisherman too. Well it turns out the BF seems to be kryptonite to my man-skills…everything I used to do impressively ‘for a girl’ has turned to custard including my ability to surf, skate, play tennis, pool, converse about all things sporting, and now I can add fishing to that list. Well I had this fantastic idea to borrow my dad’s boat (not an unusual or rare event) to take the BF out fishing. Little did I know what I had gotten myself in for.

Well things began well, set up the lines, packed the boat, checked the motor was tickety-boo, hooked the trailer to the Nissan and made the mammoth journey 150m from the end of my parents driveway to the boat ramp. So far so good. As I was amidst utilising another learned man-skill, backing the trailer, I noticed the neighbours indicating to something attached to the boat. I got out only to find screeds of nylon attached to a now empty reel and leading back to the house where it must've hooked on a tree or something as we had left the driveway. After winding the entire reel of nylon back on I continued backing the boat in. First time, no trouble.

So I am at the helm looking nautical and windswept like any good captain should. Manage to navigate a tricky entrance, leaving the safety of the harbour for the open ocean. Upon arrival at my so-called spot x it is mutually agreed to drift rather than anchor. After getting sufficiently bait-smelling, my line looks to be in order and I decide to cast my line out away from the boat. Less than 2 shakes of a lambs tail later, my line has drifted back under the boat and become impossibly tangled around the motor. Fantastic. The next 30 minutes are spent with the BF nearly up to his chest in the water trying to untangle the line from the propeller whilst I fret about the rate we are drifting over a scary looking sandbar and the swell is rapidly turning into breaking waves. In the nick of time the BF earns serious man-points for removing aforementioned fishing line and we motor away from impending doom to safety.

Once back to spot x we decide this time to anchor. I instruct the BF to “just fish” while I sort out my line and try not to cause anymore trouble. The BF flashes me jet-stares followed by rolled eyes when I refuse to let him help me. Of course, much to my frustration I am in birds nest country after about a minute, end up cutting off half of the line and retiring from the sport for the day.

I forgot to mention it was overcast and blowing a gale but while we didn’t actually get a single bite, and in spite of all the mayhem at least it was memorable and we both had a good laugh.

C.K.