I spent the entire week of the 25th on the phone with Russell and Brendon, my brother and brother in law. A fishing trip was coming together and we were loving it.
I picked up a thermacol box in the by lanes of Bangalore knowing fully well that it would be filled with ice that could preserve fish to bring back home but was more useful to safely cool some cans of beer on the way out.
Friday took painfully long to come but by evening beers were bought and tackle boxes were ready. Dad (Cecil) had arranged for worms and chicken gut using his influence with our plumber and a chicken shop cleaner and made some killer smelling raggi bait.
We met at Dad’s house at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday and the men of the house were joined by Dad’s nephew Warren! What fun! brothers, a cousin, a brother in law and dad in tow – it was going to be great day outdoors.
We headed 50 KM out of Bangalore and had an overcast sky, an 18 degrees chilled morning and mist covered rocky hills of Kolar district for company. We reached the Vemagal Lake (made famous by the Sticky note on IA.com “Bangalore - Lake fishing locations. Which is by the way actually called “Aghra Lake”!!!
We are "just turned" "rod & reel" anglers, evangelized by recent trips to the west and quick interesting shopping for rods, reels and fancy tackle!!! So obviously setting up took more time than the pro’s would take. Anyway chicken gut, raggi ball and worm bait were soon being nibbled and gobbled up.
Bren got the first strike and, yes it was the one that got away (with the hook) but gentlemen, fishermen et all… guys who’ve fished at Vemagal will vouch for my word this was a 4 kg catfish and we would have left for home if we brought it to sand!
The day moved on and between 7:45 am Beers, dirty jokes, days gone by stories and Dad’s tutorials on the benefits of the good ole bamboo rod and feather float we managed some 400 gram or so cat fish and a few carp (I’ll need ID’s please).
Thanks to a few calls from Chris during the day we were made to realize that we were doing something wrong with the weights since they were fixed and not “free moving, swivel tied” as recommended by him. So the big ones got away or just never took the bait.
I also visited a well nearby and pulled out two murrel, nice fun! no pictures because the were promptly returned to their abode for I've seem photos of murrel on IA.com and palm sized fellas were not going to tarnish my reputation :)
At 200 bucks per person – we had a good time! We caught many small buggers and let them back in, please don’t judge us for the many that were taken home for the pan – But Dad still needs convincing on leaving back entertaining and hard work for the contractors!
Please ID the carps and any help on tying better weights to bring in the bigger catfish will be appreciated!
Enjoy and hope I could make our trip visual to the readers!
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