No more tjanking. Pomadasys is calling, says Mr Candescence
Mr Candescence.
Take all the darkness of life in the province and throw it over your shoulder.
Today I travel with a man who Always.
He takes my heaviness and literally moves it through calming waters.
Nick Pike says: "Can you move your butt cheek over to the right?"
He is paddling a vintage craft, a Macski double canoe, built like no other, patched, scratched but never dispatched.
To him it is more precious than paddling in King Tut’s lunar boat.
We grew up on Nahoon waves together, and in our silverback years, we have pushed and pulled this craft up and down seven wild estuaries around here.
He is a master drift angler, eternally, his pupil.
I am also his training weight: I sit fore, he sits aft and does all the paddling, manoeuvring, sometimes baiting up, casting, but never the catching.
And paddling me up and down is how he trained to become the SA over 55 surfing champion a few weeks ago. There, his secret training method, exposed.
Nick loves "dialling me into a boss of a spotty". (Making sure I hook a large, ferocious spotted grunter.) He adores, lives for, this.
When he is not selling building products, Mr Candescence, is a freelance journalist, and has been so all his working life – LinkFM surf forecaster, surf promoter, music aficionado, dad, husband and devout Christian. He is the antithesis of the people of Curmudgeonland.
We are polar opposites, the devout charismatic and the dedicated atheist, in our pea green/off-white boat, and tonight, we might be dining with a runcible spoon and dancing by the light of the moon.
But not quite. First we must huff and puff and suck out a few ravishing Callichirus kraussi, or not-so-common sandprawn, all pink, red and yellow and with a crazy bigass, waving nipper draws blood from Nick’s forefinger.
Spotties like them, like I am, really shines.
Ileft fear, like them. But there is a knack, a code, a way. Don’t ask me, because I am generally quite lost and Nick says my strike is well, either so wild he has to grab the paddle to keep us from capsizing, or slower than a granny high on canabis oil . I am told there are quite a few of those.
It’s uncomfortably glorious in our beloved plastic boat. We have done in it in the rain, in thigh-deep mud, across the Kei in flood in the dark.
We have seen stuff, like Cape gannets (Morus capensis) nesting, their babies fluffy and brown hanging, flopping and clacking in numbers in a quiet backwater. Otter, bass, eagles, it’s just flippin’ mindblowing what is out there if you get into it and endure.
But it’s all good today. Nick is being kinder than even usual because, as he puts it, I rode over “Bambi” last week.
But I sense we are putting Robert Bly’s Iron back into John, no more “Ironing John”, as the ex put it, no more snivelling Kavanaugh. Today, while the Boks take on Australia, we are reclaiming our prowess in the hunt for Pomadasys.
This little makker with lips like Mick Jagger and a row of swords running on his roof is not to be underestimated.
Pomadasys fights to the bitter end, in the water, in the boat, they grunt and thrash, cut and thrust.
Our line is light, 5kg breaking strain, we use fly rods, and small reels. It’s an even contest and Pomadasys more often wins.
It’s game on. We fish. Nick gets a couple, but they are small. His China Muis Roberts hooks a sizeable “cobble jones” (cob). Nick sees everything, and I mean it, tip not right, bait not exciting, and it grinds him to see Muis having a great fight not far off.
Finally, we sneak into the quiet waters we know Mr Boss Spotty’s hangout. Tall, golden reeds, opaque olive water, it’s so still. Give me that rod. Plop, in goes the delectable three-prawn malva pudding, custard and cream.
Drift, drift, and the line goes heavy, go with it it, go with it, and oof! Strike! Rod fibrillates, and keels over into the water, the clutch shrieks, the boat swings, “That’s right Mike, let it go, let it go, that’s it. tyre it out. It runs at us, past us, under us, OK, I might be exaggerating but its a full-on riot.
Minutes go by and slowly, slowly the fight is won.
Nick the net swoops and there it is! He struggles to measure it against the tape markers on the crossbeam. “Fifty-five centimetres! It’s a boss! Your biggest.”
Now comes the moment. Our eyes lock. Freedom or the pan?
Nah. Stuff it.
We say nothing as Pomadasys slips back into his watery world of prawns, and sexy fish. Ah, the life of , freakishly fast, ebullient, rambunctious brute.
In the dark, Nick paddles us back to the rivermouth for the big trek home along the beach. Head torches are on. My back is aching so I am allowed to keel over backwards. The knobbles and kinks in the gear feel positively orthopaedic. The waters rush by close to my face, my jacketed elbows dip into the surface.
Suddenly, the darkness comes alive. Silver bullets are leaping into the night, pronking, and bucking. Myxus capensis, mullet, but a foot long, are flying through the air. One torpedoes Nick in the gonads, I am hit on the shoulder.
We are in the midst of a crazy migration. All day we look at placid waters and imagine what the fish are doing, and now they have come to us in their hundreds. We are immersed in their world.
It is beyond incredible. I lean back and laugh like a jakkals. I am back.