For the last couple of months everybody and his cousins have been fishing every day, rain or shine, in our front yard. Apparently, it’s currently the best fishing spot in town. Here is Sisilia and some kids having a go:
Sheba, our dog, is always out there assisting. For Sheba, ‘assistance’ means snapping up a fish whenever she can get away with it. I’ve sometimes seen as many as a dozen people standing in the rain catching tiny fish one after the other. Here is what they are catching:
I haven’t been able to find them in my fish references. If anybody out there knows what they are, please leave a comment. The local Tok Pisin name for them is mausgras. The word means moustache. If you look carefully (click to enlarge), you can see the tiny whiskers on a couple of them. This makes me think that they could be a juvenile form of some kind of Goatfish.
They are about as long as you finger. It seems that it would take a lot of them to make a meal. They wash them, coat them in batter and deep fry them. I haven’t tried any, but I”m going to go next door sometime and have a taste. These little fish are like snack food – they don’t catch enough to feed a family. Think of them as the Twinkies of the sea. The difference is that if you eat enough Twinkies, I’m certain that you will die. I don’t think that the number would be very large, either.
Over the weeks, I’d guess that they have caught many thousands. They use only a stick with a little line on it and a tiny hook. They put a bit of fish on the hook and throw it in. Within a few seconds, they will have a fish.