Overberg Angling

Funny place England. On the trip out last week, i brought a stack of vuvuzela's as gifts for a client, thinking that exporting these instruments of torture would be a good thing for SA (and my ears). All good. They loved 'em. On Friday i squeezed in the 2nd half of the SA/Mex game in a complete dive of a pub somewhere in downtown Oxford. Pretty place Oxford, but the pub was k_k. Except it was full (really) of pissed South Africans eating luke-warm pap, everyone of them with at least 1 Vuvu. Man, these guys (and girls) can blow these things. I felt bad about bringing 10 over - only adding to the mess. Interesting thing is that 99% of my fellows were black and a lot of them are studying here (think like R200k per year). But the race issue bubbles under the surface - as always - between goals one (yay) and two (nay). Anyway.

At least i can also say that i caught kreef last night - no, i mean yesterday afternoon (its like Lapland here - the sun barely touches the horizon and then the bloody thing comes up again - so its kind of like, light until 10h30, which is a bit odd from where i come from.

So ya - kreef. Must of nailed at least 50. In about 20 minutes. Poling, just like at home. Tiny little things, look like big versions of a Breede prawn, 3-5 inches long. And vicious. I mean if you put one of our West Coast Kreef in a bucket with one of these tiddlers, the Thames Boykie wins, in about 2 seconds. I think if you left them long enough in the bucket, they would chow that too. Nasty, but maybe not...

Given i got them in the Thames (high up), they are obviously fresh water (although it is tidal much lower down). How many people knew that a Mudlark was the name given to the young boys of the 18th Century who used to walk up and down the Thames at low tide and look for stuff that had been washed up? I didnt.

Some fool introduced these fresh water kreef - known as the American Signal Crayfish- into the river system "in the 1970s (to be) bred on farms for the restaurant trade". I am telling you, this thing is like a cross between Malema (on crack) and The Terminator. It wont be long before they start eating bicycles and Isuzu's.

Now this got me thinking, if it eats it's young, makes 3 foot burrows into the banks and can be caught on a left over KFC wing (hot, whatever), then there is a good chance it will dig Vuvuzela's. That would be kind of fitting - given that i am a 5 iron away from where Darwin did his thing. And if the Malemanator can evolve and switch to plastic as its main food group, why stop there? Maybe we can train 'em....

Next up: Luthuli House.

Excellent - made my day reading this.