Memories Chapter 8 Fishing and catching prawns

Those days Fabian and Francis ,they never had the money to purchase regular fishing equipments,but who needs fishing rods etc. for river fishing?

All they had was a long piece of fishing guts and a hook,for weight to pull down the hook with bait a small piece of stone will suffice.Yeah that was it.As for baits they can used earth worms which were easily available by digging the soil or easier still by pulling up some grasses to catch the worms.

Another simple baits will be to catch some small prawns with a coconut shell.However the shell must be recently grind of its fresh.Tiny prawns feeds on the left over of fresh in the coconut shell.It would not take a few minutes to catch two or three of them.

What ever it was Fabian always used earth worms to fish.The worms were attached to the fishing hook.Following the the hook were thrown into the river,not very far but as far as the fishing gut will allowed.Then come the waiting game.One had to be patient to wait for a bite.

Normally fishing was done during high tide when there were more fishes coming in following the flow of the tide.Fabian never like fishing because he had no patient to wait for a bite,therefore not catching any thing.

But there were a time he really caught a fish.He and brother BBque it over a fire and ate it.That a lucky day indeed.

One fine evening at the river they saw two Malay fishermen laying a barricade by he riverside.It was low tide and the laying was easily done.The barricade of bamboo striplings were laid about few feet from the river banks.

These were set to trap fresh water prawns coming in during high tide when the river water will over flowed into the barricades,thus trapping the prawns inside when the tide recede.

Fresh water prawns fetched a good price then,These prawns had big heads and smaller body and armed with long big blueish craws.They were actually as big as the hand can hold.At high tide they swim round the river banks in search of food.Apparently they followed the tide.

Very early the following morning Fabian and brother went to that river bank.Finding no one around ,both went into the river.The tide had receded to almost kneel level.so they immediately went to scope the river side with their hands.

In the beginning they caught two prawns.Encouraged by this Fabian tried to catch more.At one scope he sensed something in the river and immediately caught hold of it."Yes,I got one big fish",he yelled out.

No sooner had he finished yelling he pulled up something wriggling vigorously.Francis saw that it was not a fish but a water snake.In horror he called out,"Snake,snake".At this moment Fabian also noticed that it was a snake struggling and within that split seconds he fling the snake away,out further into the river.

That was really a scared for him,for holding it any longer he might have bitten by the water snake.It was indeed a lucky escaped.Thereafter both brothers climbed up to the river bank to safety.

With two prawns in hand they boiled them over a small can of water.Well nothing was lost after all.They each had a prawn for breakfast and the soup to quench their thirst.It can be considered a good day's work.

Both brothers actually had another lucky escape from another reptile - the Crocodile while catching prawns.These two brothers



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