Tales from Africa, Fishing with my mate Joe
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2016 1:25 pm
Tales from Africa
Fishing with my mate Joe
I think that the place was the Luansemfwa River, but time has dimmed my memory slightly. What I do remember is that a group of us had gone for a long weekend’s fishing together. As usual my mate Joe McClean, along with a couple more guys would share my boat, how many others came along depended upon how many boats we could muster for the trip. Joe was an older man and probably twice my age; over the years that I knew him I had come to look upon this rugged Scot from the Isle of Beauly as something of a father figure. We would do the usual bit, set up the camp, spend an evening having more than a few beers, tell stories around the fire and have a load of laughs, before finally going to sleep prior to setting off at the crack of dawn to do some fishing, Joe loved his fishing. In those days we drank ‘Lion’ & ‘Castle’ lager, but they renamed them ‘Mosi’ no doubt a reference to the name given by the Kololo tribe living in the area of the Victoria Falls, who referred to the falls as "Mosi-oa-Tunya". This name translates as "The Smoke that Thunders" an excellent description of the falls itself as the sound of it that can be heard miles away and the spray rises high into the air like the smoke from a huge fire, you get a similar effect with the beer as you remove the cap from the bottle. The other was renamed ‘Muchinga’ after the rocky escarpment that separates Zambia from neighbouring Malawi, but I never figured out why.
So off we would go, the boat on full plane up the river for quite a while heading towards an area where there were many submerged trees. We would throw out a rudimentary anchor and drift along casting our lures left and right as we chose, sometimes criss-crossing each other for that special place where the big one would be. As you can imagine there were many times that we crossed lines or hooked a submerged tree. We would usually have the best results by using a yellow spotted lure about 2” in length, 50mm in new money. I cannot remember the source of our lures but I do remember that they were expensive, I think at the time it equated to around £5 each all those years ago. Now Joe being a true Scotsman would not give up snagged lures that had cost £5 each without a fight. So when the inevitable snagged lure occurred, Joe spent about 20 minutes trying to free it without much success. He then decided that he would have to dive down under the water to free it, the rest of us were horrified, “Don’t be so bloody stupid Joe! What about the crocs” I said. “It’s all right laddie, they don’t live in fast flowing water” he replied, to this day I still think that he was confusing the life cycle of the Bilharzia water snail with that of crocodiles.
He took the emergency paddle from the back of the boat, thrust it into my hands and said “If anything comes at me, hit it with this” and like a fool I stood there with this small wooden paddle ready to fight off a bloody crocodile! Now I wonder if you have ever seen a poor swimmer trying to dive under the water from the surface? His head would plunge under the water and he splashed a lot but he did not go anywhere, it was like watching synchronised drowning. To make matters worse he would go ‘Commando’ when it came to underpants, so we were treated to this awesome sight of Joe trying to imitate a diving duck dressed only in his birthday suit, at each attempt we had to endure viewing his backside bobbing up and down like a duck and ‘the last Turkey in the shop’ flopping around.
After a while we managed to persuade him back into the boat as by now his splashing must have been attracting every crocodile in Africa, I have seen Wildebeest crossing the Masai Mara river making less splashing noises than he did. So having pulled his shorts back on again he sat with his legs straddling the seat in the centre of the boat. He was trying out different lures and in his usual careless manner the discarded lures each fitted with two sets of barbed treble hooks were left lying everywhere, on the bottom of the boat and also on the fibre glass seat he was straddling. I was steering the boat and as such had to keep looking forwards to see where we were going, believe me it was not a pretty sight! With legs akimbo, certain of Joe’s appendages were dangling down the leg of his shorts! In a strange way I was reminded of one of those medieval leather purses belonging to a rich man. “How am I expected to steer a boat looking at your dangley bits?” I wailed. He assured me that on a windy day in the highlands I would have to put up with much worse than that!
Now I swear that what happened next was unintentional, quite out of the blue, one of those submerged trees appeared and I did a hard left-hand turn to avoid it. Joe lunged to the right and slid along the smooth fibreglass seat, the discarded lures he had left lying on the seat followed him and shot up the leg of his shorts! Joe was transfixed with a frozen look of horror on his face, a rats nest of fishing line, lures and treble hooks were attached to the inside leg of his shorts, with several treble hooks having a delicate but firm hold on very sensitive parts of his anatomy. Now this is when you know who your mates really are, barely able to see for tears of laughter, I eventually managed to remove the hooks with the help of a sharp knife and a pair of long nosed pliers, much to Joe’s relief. It is a wonder that this experience has not left me mentally scarred for life and it has taken me 40 years to write this account. Sadly Joe passed away a few years ago. but I am sure I can hear the sound of a canny old Scotsman from Beauly laughing over my shoulder as I write this story.
Fishing with my mate Joe
I think that the place was the Luansemfwa River, but time has dimmed my memory slightly. What I do remember is that a group of us had gone for a long weekend’s fishing together. As usual my mate Joe McClean, along with a couple more guys would share my boat, how many others came along depended upon how many boats we could muster for the trip. Joe was an older man and probably twice my age; over the years that I knew him I had come to look upon this rugged Scot from the Isle of Beauly as something of a father figure. We would do the usual bit, set up the camp, spend an evening having more than a few beers, tell stories around the fire and have a load of laughs, before finally going to sleep prior to setting off at the crack of dawn to do some fishing, Joe loved his fishing. In those days we drank ‘Lion’ & ‘Castle’ lager, but they renamed them ‘Mosi’ no doubt a reference to the name given by the Kololo tribe living in the area of the Victoria Falls, who referred to the falls as "Mosi-oa-Tunya". This name translates as "The Smoke that Thunders" an excellent description of the falls itself as the sound of it that can be heard miles away and the spray rises high into the air like the smoke from a huge fire, you get a similar effect with the beer as you remove the cap from the bottle. The other was renamed ‘Muchinga’ after the rocky escarpment that separates Zambia from neighbouring Malawi, but I never figured out why.
So off we would go, the boat on full plane up the river for quite a while heading towards an area where there were many submerged trees. We would throw out a rudimentary anchor and drift along casting our lures left and right as we chose, sometimes criss-crossing each other for that special place where the big one would be. As you can imagine there were many times that we crossed lines or hooked a submerged tree. We would usually have the best results by using a yellow spotted lure about 2” in length, 50mm in new money. I cannot remember the source of our lures but I do remember that they were expensive, I think at the time it equated to around £5 each all those years ago. Now Joe being a true Scotsman would not give up snagged lures that had cost £5 each without a fight. So when the inevitable snagged lure occurred, Joe spent about 20 minutes trying to free it without much success. He then decided that he would have to dive down under the water to free it, the rest of us were horrified, “Don’t be so bloody stupid Joe! What about the crocs” I said. “It’s all right laddie, they don’t live in fast flowing water” he replied, to this day I still think that he was confusing the life cycle of the Bilharzia water snail with that of crocodiles.
He took the emergency paddle from the back of the boat, thrust it into my hands and said “If anything comes at me, hit it with this” and like a fool I stood there with this small wooden paddle ready to fight off a bloody crocodile! Now I wonder if you have ever seen a poor swimmer trying to dive under the water from the surface? His head would plunge under the water and he splashed a lot but he did not go anywhere, it was like watching synchronised drowning. To make matters worse he would go ‘Commando’ when it came to underpants, so we were treated to this awesome sight of Joe trying to imitate a diving duck dressed only in his birthday suit, at each attempt we had to endure viewing his backside bobbing up and down like a duck and ‘the last Turkey in the shop’ flopping around.
After a while we managed to persuade him back into the boat as by now his splashing must have been attracting every crocodile in Africa, I have seen Wildebeest crossing the Masai Mara river making less splashing noises than he did. So having pulled his shorts back on again he sat with his legs straddling the seat in the centre of the boat. He was trying out different lures and in his usual careless manner the discarded lures each fitted with two sets of barbed treble hooks were left lying everywhere, on the bottom of the boat and also on the fibre glass seat he was straddling. I was steering the boat and as such had to keep looking forwards to see where we were going, believe me it was not a pretty sight! With legs akimbo, certain of Joe’s appendages were dangling down the leg of his shorts! In a strange way I was reminded of one of those medieval leather purses belonging to a rich man. “How am I expected to steer a boat looking at your dangley bits?” I wailed. He assured me that on a windy day in the highlands I would have to put up with much worse than that!
Now I swear that what happened next was unintentional, quite out of the blue, one of those submerged trees appeared and I did a hard left-hand turn to avoid it. Joe lunged to the right and slid along the smooth fibreglass seat, the discarded lures he had left lying on the seat followed him and shot up the leg of his shorts! Joe was transfixed with a frozen look of horror on his face, a rats nest of fishing line, lures and treble hooks were attached to the inside leg of his shorts, with several treble hooks having a delicate but firm hold on very sensitive parts of his anatomy. Now this is when you know who your mates really are, barely able to see for tears of laughter, I eventually managed to remove the hooks with the help of a sharp knife and a pair of long nosed pliers, much to Joe’s relief. It is a wonder that this experience has not left me mentally scarred for life and it has taken me 40 years to write this account. Sadly Joe passed away a few years ago. but I am sure I can hear the sound of a canny old Scotsman from Beauly laughing over my shoulder as I write this story.
The poor canny Scotsman 
