Fishing in Wilderness: Part 2

The path to the spot starts and the Kaaimans river estuary, where you scramble (with cooler boxes full of beer, bait, rods etc) up the embankment and on to the now defunct Outeniqua choo-Tjoe railway tracks, along the tracks for about a Kilometre, through the now pitch dark tunnel and then down on to the rocks.

Parts of the mountain have slid down onto the tracks which have to be carefully climbed over in the dark, and with only 2 torches between us, good fun was had by all. None of us thought of bringing a camera along, so the photo is from the lagoon, where we wet tested out chemically sharpened hooks… (ie: caught nothing)

Weirdly enough, at the end of the route before you make it down to the rocks, there is a restaurant in a cave, called the Kaaimans grotto. This venue can only be reached by train and so I presume it is now closed since the landslides onto the track and the Kaaimans river pass collapsing. Their website seems to have vanished and I could only find them on the waybackmachine.

So we started fishing, nearly got trounced and drowned by the swell a few times, and I finally caught a fish, the first fish in fact and it was a beauty. A shining silver Elf, fit for a dinner for 2 or 8 small people. It’s the first Elf I have ever caught and was thrilled to bits. My eagerness in holding the gigantic sea monster up for everyone to sea was evident as it slipped from my hands and flip flopped down the rocks and back into the sea!! Heart broken I was, I could almost smell him on the fire.

So we left that spot, in the pitch dark and headed for the jetty at Vic Bay (a gorgeous place which I will tell you about later). It was nearly 21:00 now so not too much time left before lights out for the fish. In the car park at Victoria Bay, some fisherman were leaving, so I quizzed them on whether anything as happening. “The Elf are going Bedonnerd!”, “so why are you leaving?” ” we have run out of Pilchard, and reached our quota!” Then our second mistake became apparent in that we had also run out of
pilchard. So we struggled with the chokka “squid” for a while, but managed to land another Elf, a Streepie and a weird Catfish thing.

I was later told that I should not have handled the catfish, because it has a poisonous spine, which involves a trip to the hospital, but I was just lucky and ignorant I guess. We got home and the fish went straight onto the fire (after scaling and gutting) delicious.

I didn’t get a chance to fish of my new dinghy this time, but it’s coming.