O P o t B

I am a keen fisherman and will take any opportunity to wet my lines, although I must admit that despite my efforts, I am not as successful as I would like to be or believe.  Not that I have not caught my fair share of fish, why I even managed, on a trip to Mauritius, to hook a blue marlin, all 284 kg of fish.  But the real attraction to fishing is the gadgets that are required and the technicality of it all.  It starts with the rod, then the real, line, hooks leaders, plastics, lures, poppers and the like.  Then there are sinkers and bait holders and a slew of bits and bobs that make up a well-stocked fishing tackle box,  and that, that is the real attraction. Rods with that special action that gives the feel of a great fisherman, reels with slick bearings that give that hot knife through butter feel,  line that allows you to cast amazing distances, hooks that turn in the fishes mouth so you can  hook a fish without any effort, all this and I still have trouble catching fish. I

I am passionate about gadgets, and I cannot resist a gadget especially if it comes in the form of a tool that claims it will make the job easier. Take the hook tying tool I bought a while ago. I had on many occasions impaled my fingers while tying a hook to the end of my fishing line.  So fish tying gadget here I come.  I get home, tear open the packaging and dive into the instructions.  In their wisdom, they have only included a diagram to show how to use the tool.   I try following the diagram and no matter how hard I try I cannot work out how they have managed to loop the line over the tool and hook and cannot locate the hole through which I need to thread the end of the line to complete the knot.  YouTube to the rescue!  YouTube, where you can find videos on every subject under the sun, well almost.  I locate the only video featuring my hook tying tool and select it for viewing.   Instead of showing how to use the tool, the video shows every page of the instruction manual while ex

My decision to learn how to swim had nothing to do with the fact that the earth is more than two-thirds water.   The point is had my dad, in his wisdom, not lifted me out of the water when I tried to swim to shore after climbing off a tyre tube when I was no more than a lad of 4 years old, you would not be reading this post, and I would be pushing up the daisies.  It is this which drove my desire to teach myself how to swim. I decided the best approach was to go to a pool observe and then in the safety of the shallow end of the pool I would attempt to teach myself to swim.  Since this was the late sixties, 1960's for those who are not in the know,  the one thing that was difficult to come by was a swimming pool.  They were as scarce as hen's teeth. A private swimming pool in an Indian area was unheard off, and a public pool was not very high on the list of priorities of the municipal authorities, and I would be surprised if it did make it to the list in the first place con