DAY 33. A FISHING TEST

Good morning! The sunrise is so beautiful when it is not raining and I have my passport with me in a safe nook. I am going to do nothing meaningful today, just rest.

This time my fishing effort was much more interesting. I guess it is the daylight that matters. In the evening, I catch catfish mostly and in the afternoon all sorts of piranhas take the bait.

One piranha. Two piranhas. Three piranhas. I started with bread as bait, and ended up using pieces of fish. I have also selected the optimum hook by running numerous tests: it should be 2-3 centimeters long. With great relief, I was finally convinced that my pitiful performance before was all about the wrong place, not due to my lack of skill. It took me a couple of hours to catch a dozen piranhas of two different colours – they are very beautiful. Some are purple, while others feature numerous spots.

By the way, let me tell you a little about piranhas. There is a stereotype about their aggressiveness, that they are almost looking for people to eat them. It is a myth bred by countless films. Piranhas are social fish, that is why they stick together, and if they attack a person, it is usually a mistake on their part. I have only met a couple of people on the river who have shared stories of a piranha mistakenly ripping off a piece of skin somewhere on their leg. I have seen those scars. They look nasty, but far from fatal.

I was planning to give my day’s catch to the cats, but Yoli suggested that I should give the fish to a local poor man so that he could sell them. I do not want anyone to get drunk on my tab, but perhaps he needs the money to buy food. It is beyond my control now. I have not come across any cats today anyway. They must have had enough. I hope they will not be angry with me.

When it had grown dark and I went to bed, I found a huge rat under the pontoon. It was chewing on a piece of plastic for some reason. What can I say… to each his own.