Miller's Thump

I was browsing (as you do) through a tattered old Italian/English dictionary we have. I don't speak Italian but I like to silently mouth the words to myself on quiet Saturday mornings.

Ghiozzo is translated as meaning "miller's thump". Intriguing. What is a miller's thump? Something like a baker's dozen? Well, there are only 9 google hits for the term. According to the University of Washington it’s this:

Scientific name Uranidea tenuis

Google suggests that maybe I mean "miller's thumb". It has 224,000 of those, including this one at Barbel Fishing World.

Looks like the babel fish from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

 Wikipedia has a not-so-good photo but adds the information;

The bullhead (Cottus gobio) is a freshwater fish that is widely distributed in Europe, mainly in rivers. It is a member of the Cottidae family, a type of sculpin. It is also known as the miller's thumb, freshwater sculpin, common bullhead or European bullhead.

 So - different fish perhaps. But I prefer miller's thump. You know - it's a type of sculpin.

Some pictures of the rocks I sailed around today for 8 hours

My boss paid for us all to take a work day off today, and go tuna fishing off the south coast. That's pretty good isn't it? He's a pretty fantastic boss. So I am not going to post any pictures of him asleep in the Big Fish Fighting Chair.

We were out there for eight hours - Steve was very keen to catch some bluefin. We got one bluey, and three stripy tuna, so a pretty quiet day really. After about 5 hours I was ready to get off the boat, to be honest.

We had some casualties. Two workmates threw up early on, then found somewhere to sleep. A third actually spent the whole trip bent over the rail, head down, occasionally getting waveslapped in the face while throwing up. The whole eight hours. Once we were back on land, he pulled himself together and was his usual charming self. Which to my mind wins Effort of the Day.

Nathan's face says "I caught it, but I can't eat it. Or anything else."

Like the tuna, Jeff is strangely attracted to the squiddly lures.

What ho, young flathead

In preparation for a fishing trip today, I spent about an hour last night up the hill practicing my casting. I chose a nice clear area, but I still had to retrieve my leader (like my fisho jargon?) from various bushes and shrubs. My casts always sliced to the right. Once I twigged that I had to watch the tip of my rod all the way over my head, I was casting straight out in front.

This morning I took the boys down to Margate Jetty to try our luck. Our lines hit the water before 10, and we were still at it at 12.30, so that's pretty good going. We did get some bites, honest we did, but the sole fish we got out of the water was an undersize flathead. Thank God we got something, though. We were operating under the steady and unimpressed gaze of about two dozen cray fishermen, and I felt moderately justified when I was able to unhook and throw back a flattie, albeit too small for a kitten's dinner.

I was very proud of Marcus, who had the rod most of the day, and was casting magnificently. He snagged 31 couta at his last outing, so this was a bit of a comedown for him, but he took it well. Linguistic note: after a not-so-good cast, Marcus used the term "epic fail".

Michael did not fall in, and was still amused by the whole "drop something in the water, pull it out again" routine 2 hours after we started. So, a big thumbs up there. He did a few pretty good casts with his handline. He talked and/or sang the entire time. (His repertoire includes a number of Christmas carols at the moment. Yesterday Elf gently suggested he might consider the school choir next year - this was met with towering scorn.) He spent a lot of time today arranging crayfish antennae and legs on the jetty, and trying to work out a way to use them as bait.

I had the big handline most of the day, and only did one of my famous homicidal mis-casts, where hooks and lead fly about at head height for 3 - 5 seconds. Mostly I was getting it out there OK, got loads of nibbles but couldn't hook the buggers.

The jetty mostly serves the crayfish fleet, who are doing it a bit tough at present. China unilaterally banned Australian and NZ crayfish, for reasons that have not been explained. Your average cray man is up to his neck in debt on his boat and license, so they are desperately trying to sell their catch to anyone. Your average Tasmanian (if they are anything like me) has forgotten what crayfish tastes like since they have been priced out of our reach. This boat was selling live crays - I couldn't imagine taking one home and boiling it alive. But they were doing a fair trade.

We wrapped up the session after I decided I had unsnagged my last snag, but we'll go again soon I hope.

The fishmeister

On the weekend, Marcus was invited to go out fishing on a boat, to celebrate his friend Ned's birthday. He had a fantastic time, and he caught 31 fish! In my whole life I have caught about half that - in fact my Order of Australia medal was "for dedication to increasing fish life expectancy". Here he is showing off part of his barracouta catch. He did catch a gummy shark, but "they had to throw it back because it fell on the, um, you know, floor, and got dirty".

I continue to take over the internet

My work colleague Ben went fishing up in the lakes last weekend. He says he caught a tench - I don't know how he identified it, but for the sake of the story let's say it really was a tench. Of course, he consulted the internet for good tench recipes, and this is what he found, high up in the Google search.1

1. Says he. I have just repeated his experiment and cannot see it anywhere but I am not letting that stand in the way of a blog post.

Fish - they think they are so smart

Are you sick of fish? Give them an inch and they take a mile? Cut you off in the carpark? You know, I'm pretty sure I saw some fish talking to your girlfriend.

Well, I've had it up to here with fish, and I'm sick of just talking about it. Nick, and I and our good friend Michael Kerschbaum got in his boat and went and made a statement, gave those fish something to think about.

I TRICKED three salmon into getting into our boat with a shiny silver lure. Not so smart now, eh fish? Then I took them home and ATE them. That's right. Grilled them with butter. I might be CRAZY, but I'm CRAZY like a FOX.

So - things are pretty quiet around here now. I haven't heard one smarty-alec comment from a fish today. I think I have sent a message, not just to salmonids but to ALL fish, that we have had enough nonsense.