Amazon: Tribal Visit/Piranha Fishing

The lodge had three hours of power from 6pm to 9pm to charge up electronics and use the lights and then the generator plunged us into darkness until the following evening. I had slept early in the evening so I was ready for the 5am meet up this morning to take the boat out and see a sunrise on the Amazon river. We climbed into a smaller boat without a roof and drove out to where we had stopped yesterday to watch the dolphins. The sun was just starting to come up and the sky was colourful. Fishing bats were flying along the surface of the river feeding off the insects. When we eventually stopped to watch the sunrise, we saw some pink dolphins – they were bright pink this time and it was very noticeable and exciting! They were swimming slower too so it was a better time to get a good look at them. We watched some birds waking up for the day too and then when the sun was fully up we headed back to the camp for our breakfast of scrambled eggs, bread rolls with ham and cheese, and slices of papaya. Since I don’t eat eggs I took two bread rolls without much care who else was behind me as it seems that everyone takes enough for themselves here given how little food was there at dinner last night. I felt it fair to take more this time and the group of old people behind me in line could miss out as I had on the salad and pineapple! We then took the boat back to monkey island as the Puerto Rican mother wanted to see it since she had been unwell yesterday. We also stopped at Yahua tribe’s village where they all greeted us and shook our hands, the tribe chief demonstrated how to use the blowgun and we all had a turn with that. They started an awkward “dance” which was walking around in circles with two tribesmen playing a drum and a recorder. The others all got roped in but I stayed off to the side with Rodrigo not wanting to make a spectacle of their culture, I felt like this was just for tourists and they don’t actually do this normally/naturally. Rodrigo then took us back to the animal sanctuary for mama to take a photo holding the sloth while I went for a walk with Rodrigo and Rachel. I then discovered that Rachel and Naomi were not sisters, but were in fact a couple. It made a lot of sense since Rachel could speak Spanish but far less than Naomi and she spoke English fluently. I had originally created some kind of backstory for their family moving to the continental US when Rachel was younger and so she preferred English but the couple thing definitely explained a lot more! Rachel said in Peru that “they are sisters” to prevent unwanted attention or discrimination. We walked around on foot given the village was dry and all the paths were clear however Rodrigo explained that in the rainy season, people would take canoes between the various buildings as the water would rise by a couple meters and all the buildings would be up to their stilts in water. It would be very interesting to take some comparison photos on a rainy season visit! Our next stop was a small shack on the river where we hopped out of our uncomfortable small boat without any shade to do some piranha fishing. Our boat driver had prepared a bag of bait and threaded it onto some hooks for us, Rodrigo then showed us how to disturb the water and then drop the bait in to try and catch something. He caught a red belly piranha and a sardine without much effort. Rachel also was gifted in this activity and she caught two piranhas; an adult and a baby. I never caught anything but Naomi managed to reel in a baby piranha at the last second too. We rushed back onto the boat and gunned it back for lunch, going so fast that a fish leapt out of the waves below the boat and smacked papa in the face, the girls both screamed and Rodrigo shouted for them to keep the fish in the boat so Naomi held it down with her shoe until he could grab it. It was a vicious-looking, ugly dogfish but I guess it would end up on the dinner table…

From Night Owl to Dogfish - Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer

In brief: Bett and Avery are horrified that their dads are dating and sending them to STEM camp together for bonding time! They’re too different. It will be a DISASTER. Except … life has a funny way of changing your perspective.

Thoughts: My coworker pitched this to me as “adorable” and she was right! I would like to add “charming,” “sweet,” and “more complicated than expected.” It’s also the first proper epistolary novel I’ve read in a while, and it was quite well done and believable. The girls sound and act like girls—voices, interests, random detours into completely unrelated topics, "it seemed like a good idea” decisions, the whole bit—and I really enjoyed watching them grow over the course of the story.

And the story was really engaging! It starts out as a sort of reverse of The Parent Trap, but then it becomes a whole lot more. There’s stuff about family and who is family, and about dealing with disappointment, and how life isn’t a single neat story. I quickly found myself cheering with and for the girls, and therefore also cheering for their dads, and I really liked that it portrayed Bett and Avery both as smart, culturally savvy, and as believable daughters of single gay dads. There’s talk of the Marriage Equality Act and not using screens before bed and they’ll just randomly google things because why not, right?

(Also, a surprising amount of diversity! Bett is a girl of colour. Avery is Jewish and has anxiety. Grandma isn’t sitting at home knitting. The dads aren’t the only gay people. I’m pretty sure there were disabled kids at camp, though this is now two books ago so I don’t entirely remember. All of it’s just mentioned in passing, though, apart from the anxiety. Avery has Concerns™.)

And this is pretty adult-reader-friendly too! The adults get subplots and character development, which isn’t common in middle grade, I don’t think. They have realistic-feeling perspectives and reactions throughout. There are parts that made at least this adult snort in a “oh dear, I see where this is going, oh children” sort of way. There’s also a bunch of critique, or possibly just subtextual discussion, of helicopter parenting and extracurricular pressure and wanting things to be 100% perfect and safe for kids at all times, which I found refreshing.

In other words, this is definitely a middle grade that’ll work for kids and adults, and definitely one I’m going to be recommending at work. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s got depth, it’s not going to bore parents or teachers, and I can absolutely see it as an in-class discussion read or something along those lines. It’s very current in a lot of ways and yes! Kids with! Gay parents! Should have! Rep!

8/10

To bear in mind: This book + sugary food = death by sweetness. Several minor characters with homophobic opinions, but like, that’s reality, and both girls discount those perspectives immediately. And …

near-death experiences involving lakes.

Mixed Fortunes

Over the past couple of weeks the fishing has remained pretty hit or miss in the South Devon area. The weather has warmed up which has made things feel more pleasant to be out in. The catch rates haven’t warmed up a lot though. Last time I reported on how scratching techniques seemed to be working reasonably well from the beaches local to me. With no real significant sign that things were improving I have continued along this line of attack, joined once again by family members.

Following up his run of successful trips my dad was certainly up for trying to up his species count and also to try to get a nice sized flounder from the beach. Once again we stayed local to him and chose to fish the Ness Beach in Shaldon. Situated on the opposite side of the Teign Estuary to Teignmouth, Shaldon is a lovely coastal village. There are a few good spots to fish for bass and flounders along the river shoreline, particularly for bass in the raging waters of the river mouth over low water. With strong westerly winds again sweeping down the river we opted to go for the shelter of the Ness. I enjoy fishing the Ness; I caught my first bass from this beach many years ago. Fishing this beach always feels like a real adventure. Its main access point is through a smuggler’s tunnel cut straight through the sandstone cliffs.

The sounds of the wind and surf echo through the tunnel as you make your way down. You never know what you’ll find when you reach daylight at the bottom. On this day I found a very calm sea and not a breath of wind, with the cliffs behind us forming a perfect barrier to all Westerly breezes.

The calm, settled sea looked good to target flatfish from the clean ground in the middle of the beach. The ground becomes more mixed the closer you go to either end. I had an eye on the possibility of a plaice on the sandbanks further out. My dad hoped for flounder in the gulleys closer in. It was perhaps the nicest afternoon we have had all year, almost warm before the sunset. Unfortunately the crabs also felt it was a nice afternoon to be out and were on the feed hard. Nothing was safe from their hungry claws and we endured biteless hours over the top of the tide and into darkness. With that the full moon rose serenely over the sea and shone with all its intensity for the remainder of the session. A friend of ours, Gary, joined us and managed to winkle out a dogfish around dusk. I had a few runs on a large squid bait cast in close for a bass but couldn’t connect with anything. I suspect they were dogfish. Big bass are caught from this beach regularly but more often after an Easterly blow has stirred things up. Smoothounds appear later in the year. The beach does get very busy with tourists through the summer making night fishing and very early mornings the best time to fish. Dad and I suffered a blank but it was enjoyable to be out on an evening that finally felt like spring was here.

That poor result didn’t deter me from trying another beach for my next session. This time I was joined by Roy, my partner’s father. We met up in Sidmouth to fish the Jurassic Coast. With strong westerly winds forecast I picked a location on the main town beach that looked like it would offer some shelter. We both arrived a bit later than we would’ve liked due to the rugby being on the telly. We had our first baits in the water just as dusk was beginning to form a gloom around us.

Two offshore breakwaters protect this area of the beach and the town from the worst of the rough seas. They also provide shelter for many species of fish and a pathway for species to move into the shallower waters. Despite the forecast there was a complete lack of any wind and a nice feel to the air again, no chilly fingers when baiting up. Bites came as soon as the light went from the sky. With a heavy cloud cover it was a dim evening. A few waves were hitting the shore with force and the water was well coloured for some distance out. The first fish ashore was a bass of about a pound on a bait cast at distance on my rod. Roy, using his freshwater outfits, was soon into fish as well. Casting a Wessex rig beyond the breakers a good bite resulted in a small bull huss, certainly a surprise capture from the clean ground in front of us.

This was followed immediately by a slightly larger version. My baits got hit by dogfish soon after. I was pleased to see one as it was the first of the year for me, another species to add to my tally for the year. A solid strike onto Roy’s carp rod resulted in a very spirited scrap from a very chunky dogfish just before high water.

Weighing in at 2lb 5oz it was a very nice specimen from the shore at this time of year. She was safely returned just as a smaller specimen took my bait. It had been an action packed hour over the high water period. As the ebb tide began things went quiet for a while. Roy started packing up and went to refresh baits for one last cast. As he was dealing with one rod his other rod baited with sandeel and ragworms curved over alarmingly. I grabbed it to avoid losing it to the sea. A short fight followed before a shape appeared on the surface in the gloom, a ray.

It wasn’t going to break any records but it was Roy’s first ever small-eyed ray. I was delighted to see another species hit the beach and it was good to learn that they could be targeted from this section of the shore. Hopefully a sign that the corner is being turned in regards to our fishing fortunes. I stayed on another hour into the ebb for another dogfish before calling it a night myself. A much more fortunate evening than the week before and a renewed enthusiasm that things are improving locally. Roy was over the moon to see a number of different species on this session remarking that in sea fishing you really never know what you are going to catch.

Around the coast things have been quiet. A few plaice are showing from East Devon and the South Hams but not in the numbers they were last year. Mackerel and herring are being caught regularly from the deeper waters around Torbay.

I would expect more plaice to show over the coming weeks. Easterly winds are forecast which will kill things for a while. Thornback rays will be worth targeting from the shelter of the South Hams estuaries. Flounders will also be showing later in the month as they return from their offshore spawning grounds. I am hoping to try my hand at course fishing very soon and will hopefully be able to report on a new experience for me!

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