My brother in law and nephew are avid fishermen.
Over Christmas it was wonderful to bond with them talking about fish species, fishing as a sport, various anti-poaching stories of mine and the different fish they've caught through the years.
They went out on their boat on New Year's Day and while they uphold catch and release for almost all fish, they will occasionally take a nice sized fish to cook according to the legal size limits for the species. Everything else gets released back into the lagoon. On New Year's Day my nephew returned exceptionally proud with a fish in hand - and not a small fish either.
This family of fish is called Stumpnose, sometimes also referred to as Bream. The species caught here was a Natal Stumpnose which although they are found in quite a few different spots along the coast and in estuaries, fish this size are rather rare.
My nephew believes in being honourable to your catch and he prepared a very special and delicious pan fried fish fillet for supper.
It was a truly beautiful fish with lovely rainbow and gold colouration on its face.
I had a small piece just to taste it and I was very impressed with how tasty it turned out.
The following day Lory and I were treated by my sister and brother in law to a day of fishing on the boat.
While Lory is a huge water baby I am not a massive fan of vast expanses of water even though I used to manage one.
Driving over other boats wake is really not fun when you are heavily pregnant
We stopped off at a sand bank to collect some mudprawns as fishing bait which Lory enjoyed immensely.
We had 3 rods in the water and the sneaky fish greedily gobbled the mudprawns off our lines but managed to evade our reeling efforts. Until the last mudprawn!
Lory was given the privilege of reeling in a little Stumpnose. She was ecstatic and loved her first experience of reeling in a fish, holding it and setting it free.
She was very proud of herself and I was also proud of her, beaming with that bright smile.
It was a wonderful few days that I hope she will remember for a long, long time. I hope she can have more experiences like this is the future that bring out that big, bright beautiful smile.
My little water baby caught her first fish. I'm a proud mommy.
All photos have been used with permission from the owners
