Weirdo fish – 5-Bearded Rockling

Not only a weirdo fish, but the scene in which I caught him was bizarre. What followed afterwards was even weirderer.

The scenario… fishing my usual spot, one line is out on a leger, the other with a float. Reckon I see a nibble on the leger so start to wind in. It becomes apparent that, not for the first time, I’ve caught the bottom. But this time, the 3lb weight is well and truly wedged in some enormous crevice (wahey) and is not coming loose any time soon. Inevitably, the line snaps, stealing my rig. Given the dark, I decide I’ll just fish the float until I get bored. Reel it in for a recast, and hey presto, she’s snagged as well. *Snap*. Line goes. In the space of a minute, I’ve lost both rigs. Sat on the rock, watching my posh float with the luminescent tip in, finishing off the rest of my beer, I notice that it’s not floating anywhere. Nope, the line is still good, the float is floating, but clearly it has snapped in such a way that it’s not going anywhere. And, presumably, still baited up. And yes, it was. For 5 minutes later, the float disappears, with all the telltale signs of there being a monster of a fish on there. Typical.

The end of the story, that is not. I rigged a lure on to one of the lines, which is nothing more than a 3 pronged really bloody hooky hook with a fake fish, figuring that if I can cast over the float line, I might just be able to reel it in. And on the third attempt, I achieved just that. Started reeling in, where it became quickly apparent that the monster of a fish I’d caught, was no monster at all. But a species I’ve never seen before.

I called it a night there, packed up, went home. In the light of the house, I inspected the fish. By my reckoning, a 5-Bearded Rockling. Ever seen one of them before?

And he was nowt but a wee nipper of a thing. And still alive. With a hook in his mouth. With a huge pang of guilt, I quickly performed an emergency hookyoctomy (or whatever you would call removing a bigass hook from the stomach of a small, very wiggly fish, who was not too amused and me, my hands and a crap disgorger being in its mouth). In a bowl of water, he was still there. Only just mind. Into a water tight bag he went, and I legged it the half mile or so it is back down to the fishing mark, to set him free back into the wild, where, as far as I could tell from the dim light of my torch, he did swim away.

So he might have made it. Bit of a pavlova all round.

Beer Quiz

This funky little game is doing the email rounds at the moment. Test your knowledge of beer bottle labels!

Bottle Quiz

And if you get stuck, or reckon you’re the champ, the answers…

Bottle Quiz Answers

Fishyfishy

Caught two beauts on Friday. One large pollack (yawn), but a splendid looking black bream. Must have been 2lbs easy. And on a leger. I think that put’s the table at:

1… Pollack (6)
2… Garfish (5)
3=… Black Bream (2)
3=… Horse Mackerel (2)
3=… Mackerel (2)

I think I need to adjust my technique and/or location to start branching out a bit!

It’s all gone jobtastic

I’ve scored a nice little part time job working for a pub in town as well. It’ll be nice to have some money coming in again after going from earning about £1000+ a month to… zero. And not drinking any less beer.

If I could just get this pesky PhD written up, I really would be sorted.

Amusing Googlebomb

Go to Google.com, type “failure”, and click “I’m feeling lucky”. Humourous, certainly. Almost as funny as “french military victories”.

Amazon Spoof

I keep banging on about this stuff, but this phishing attempt (in the same way that most do) really makes me laugh. Because it’s sooooo crap, and so obviously false. This is one that you’d have to be really stupid to fall for (in as much as a lot of the other ones I’ve seen look professional enough that the untrained eye could easily fall for it)… just read the text, consider the grammar, the typo’s, the language… everything. Classic.

Revision to Your Amazon.com information

At the last reviewing at your amazon account we discovered that your information is inaccurate. We apologize for this but because most frauds are possible because we don’t have enough information about our clients, we require this verification. Please login and reenter your personal information.

Please follow this link to update your personal information:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/sign-in.html

(To complete the verification process you must fill in all the required fields)

Please note: If you don’t update your information within next 48 hours , we will be forced to suspend your account untill you have the time to contact us by phone.

We apreciate your support and understanding, as we work togeder to keep amazon market a safe place to trade. Thank you for your attention on this serious matter and we apologize.

——————————————————————————–
This message was generated automatically, please do not reply to it. Amazon treats your personal information with the utmost care, and our Privacy Policy is designed to protect you and your information.

I highlighted a few of the bits that are wrooooong. I hope a phisher doesn’t read this, take my advice then actually create a good one of these. Um.

Fish Update

I think the official standings are now:

1=… Garfish (5)
1=… Pollack (5)
3=… Horse Mackerel (2)
3=… Mackerel (2)
5… Black Bream (1)

Now you know.