Fishing & a story about a hat

As this blog started off as a diary of Ken's fishing business it will probably come as no surprise that there is a post about fishing.  In fact fishing was the reason we first went to Gambia for holiday back in 2001.  We had been talking about taking an off the beaten track holiday and were at the Chatsworth Country Show when we found a stall promoting fishing holidays to Gambia when asked what there was to to for the non-fisherman or in this case woman the chap said birdwatching, we took the brochure away with us and had a good look through, for me this would have been the most exotic place I'd visited and I quite liked the look of it. We have since heard people say of Gambia that you either love it or hate it, as this last trip out there was our 8th you can tell which camp we fall into.

From that first trip (with a couple of exceptions) Ken has always booked his fishing trips through the same people, Mark and Tracy Longster, who are English based in Gambia, some of you may think the price of £140.00 per trip is a bit steep and indeed it probably is, however during the year we don't do much apart from the occasional visit to see Big Al - my nickname for the landlord of our village pub - so when we are on holiday we like to spend money on doing things we enjoy.

The price includes boat hire and boat man's wages, bait, and cold drinks and taxi to pick up at the hotel and drop back off after fishing,  tackle is also provided but Ken sometimes takes his own stuff - something I don't add to The List I let him sort that out himself. So an exchange of emails from here to Gambia and the first trip was booked for the Wednesday after our arrival.  The price is for booking the boat if you have more than one person obviously you share the cost but Ken likes to be on his own, I could go if I wanted but I'm more than happy to stay by the pool reading or take a walk on the beach.

The fishing trips depart from Dentons Bridge which is not too far from our hotel, the taxi picks up at 0915,

The boat is loaded up and then off out of the creek on to the Gambia River, depending on what sort of days fishing, the first stop is usually to buy live bait which is used for catching (can't remember what species and if I ask him again he'll get stroppy!!).  Mostly the fishing is over the reef down at Bakau and the target species are captain fish, grouper, snapper, but as any fishermen reading this will testify 'fishing' and 'catching' are two very different words ! The following pictures were all taken during one of our many holidays I'll identify which are from the current trip,

this was from our most recent trip,

The first time back in 2001 the captain of the boat was a very nice man called Famara ( not to be confused with our bird guide who is also Famara) he then left Mark's employ and was not seen for several years as he was doing his own thing so it was a pleasant surprise that he was back skippering this year 

Famara and a fish -this looks like it was in the creeks so I think it will be a  barracuda  will edit once The Expert has confirmed !

Theoretically the fish that is caught belongs to the person who paid for the boat however 99% of the time Ken always gives the fish to the boat skipper, they can then sell them in the fish market, or sometimes the people at Dentons bridge buy them, there have been a couple of times when we have taken one or two of the fish - always making sure the boat skipper has the best - we have then taken them to a beach bar and had them cooked for us - from sea to plate in a couple of hours !

Usually the fishing is out on the reef and it can be a bit 'uppy and downy' with the swell and a bit chilly with the wind even in Gambia so as I said I don't go however I do like to go up the creek on one of the pirogues so last time (2011) we booked for that 

picture from BoatDesign.net

This is the sort of boats I like, they have cushions and seats and shelter from the sun and they go slowly !

I caught a fish !

so did he, but it was a bit too strenuous for some in fact I don't think the other chap woke up the whole time we were out - he still shared the end of day tip tho!

But real men like BIG fish ! 

Ken, Ninja (no not his real name) and a PROPER fish ! - snapper I think (again I'll check with The Oracle) from our 2011 trip.

another big one, captain fish and Buba Gambia's most punctual taxi driver, again from 2011

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post the fishing trips depart from a place called Dentons Bridge, 

picture from Flikr 

There are a lot of sellers here selling anything from 'silver' jewellery to wooden carvings, I usually end up buying necklaces - stone ones not 'silver' However one time I made a very expensive purchase - it was our second trip, we arrived at Dentons Bridge to go fishing - this was back in the day when I used to go too, I didn't have a sun hat and they are 100% a necessity - prevent sun stroke etc, so I ran into the first hut selling hats and emerged a couple of minutes later with a rather fetching straw hat, we jumped onto the fishing boat and off we went. A while later Ken commented on my hat and asked me how much I'd paid for it, it was the equivalent of £10.00 Ken and the boat man nearly fainted - that is probably more than the seller makes in a week, I had paid the first price he had asked for and not done the 'proper' thing of haggling him down to at least half of the first price.  At the end of our holiday I carefully packed The Hat in to my suitcase and unpacked it when I got home, The Hat was one of the first things to go back in the case for our next trip. I arrived at Dentons Bridge the following holiday proudly wearing my hat and heard a voice booming from one of huts :

 "I recognise that hat" 

 it was the seller I had bought it from the previous year! however I think I get the last laugh, I still  have The Hat and it has accompanied me on each trip since, so working out that it cost £10.00 and we've done 6 more trips since I think I got my monies worth ! ! 

a bit like this one but without the ribbon - picture from Orvis, 

A helping hand

Sometime last year I saw an ad in on one of the fishing trade sites asking for skippers of under 10mt inshore fishing boats to take part in a survey for CEFAS (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science - doesn't exactly trip of the tongue does it !! hence CEFAS) the best part of the survey is that a fee is paid - as they say every little helps ! It mainly involves listing where the boat was fishing what they caught etc  the returns are submitted to CEFAS and then paid a fixed sum per submission.  Occasionally members of the CEFAS staff like to come out on the boat with the fisherman. Below is Sam & her colleague Gary.

The fish is a common Ray, not allowed to land this species, it was alive so went back to swim free !

Now, own up, who out there when watching nature programmes featuring seals immediately goes "aaahhhh cute" ? yes me too, however the following picture shows the utter devastation they cause.

These are (were) monkfish, the seals get into the fishing nets and eat the monkfish tails leaving the unsaleable heads, as you can see there are 6 monks the tails of which can fetch up to £10/kg each and each tail is about 3kg - you can do the maths it makes one heck of a dent in the accounts! Once fed the seals swim off to rest before finding another net to feed on.

From SimonPW3 skipper of fishing boat Sparkling Line - another Cornish fishing boat via Twitter

"1trip alone we have lost 600 monkfish to seals” ouch, that's about £15k worth"

I usually get text messages when the boat is landing back in port to let me know all is safe, usually the text are just "landed" etc but sometimes it's "I've been Gweek'ed" which means the seals have won and the Gweek reference to the Seal Sanctuary at the nearby village of Gweek.


This weeks fishing has mainly been mackerel. Can you name the one that's not mackerel?

and do you know what is unusual about it? - answers at the bottom !

Typically the best mackerels were caught on Friday and there is no market now till Tuesday because of the Bank Holiday weekend - our friend Eric had a couple but mainly they will be used for baiting the lobster pots - there hasn't been much success in that line either so far - the sea is still far too cold - where the heck is this global warming when you need it ? !

This was a nice bonus it is a Brill also known as Poor Man's Turbot - very nice, I like this fish, and readers may like to be reassured that the hat and sweatshirt are now in the washing machine !

In case you were thinking that Skipper had gone all techy and managed to set the timer on the camera Jim a.k.a. Dolphin Man and Free Labour was on board on as well and he took the photo.


Back to that fish - it is a Garfish and what's unusual about it is that it has green bones - yes honestly GREEN ! not one that I'd eat.

"no more fish thanks I'm full"

Bye for now from me and the seals !

Back to the day job

The weather has been dreadful down here, very strong gale force winds have mean that there has been little opportunity for fishing, but at least that means I get nice dinners !
The weather has to be checked several days in advance to allow for travelling out to the fishing ground and the time the nets will be in the water and again for getting back out to collect them. The website XCWeather is one of those used also the Met Office website.
The weather finally settled this week and nets were put out on Monday for collecting on Friday,

nets being 'shot'

So it was an early start on Friday and expectations for monkfish were met 

Monkfish,

usually they are dead when the nets are hauled this one was alive but not after he had had his head chopped off and his tail wrapped in Parma ham and roasted for 20 minutes !

There was also about 100kg of Spider crabs which can be fiddly to extract from the nets, the legs are very delicate and break easy so it took a while to finish.

so the kettle went on for a brew (looks like the cooker needs a bit of clean)

The red dot is the marker indicating where the nets are.  The bay is full of those big tankers and they are causing a problem for the inshore fleet, one fisherman has lost over £1000.00 of pots because they go over the markers dragging it with them.

Saturday was not such an early start but it was a bit misty

St Michael's Mount

Does what it says on the tin and very useful in misty weather, the autopilot, you type in your course and it takes you there - you do still have to watch out for other vessels !

There were a few rays in the nets too, the one one the left is a spotted ray and the other one is a blonde ray, can you see the difference? 

Nets cleaned time for a bit of photography, 

back end of the boat, also known as the stern, the front pointy bit is the bow (I think!)

This looks like it is Lizard way - it's that damned Lizard again Peter !

While Ken was being a fisherman I was being a cleaner, I posted the following on my Facebook Page

I was up at 7.30, bathroom cleaned, fridge cleaned, windows cleaned, the bedrooms cleaned, all downstairs cleaned, all floors washed, you name it I cleaned/washed it, shopping done and fridge re stocked, he comes home from fishing and asks "what have you done today, sat in the garden?" Good thing I'd not got anything sharp in my hand!!

Now back to those rays - could you see the difference? the spotted ray is the one on the left and has two more prominent spots either side of it's body and the other spots don't go to the very edge of it's body as they do on the blonde ray - the fishermen have a saying to differentiate between them "blondes go all the way!!"

Enough for now, and there's still more Gambia ramblings to "look forward to" 

A bit more birding

I promise this will be the last post about birdwatching but please be advised the fishing blog is still under construction so you are not out of the woods just yet.

Chronologically we are still in the first week of our holiday and have not yet been to Georgetown but the timing isn't really relevant. Our next trip out with Famara and Pax (the taxi driver) was to Tanji and the surrounding area. Tanji is another fishing village south of Gambia which you can smell as you approach,

the smell of smoking fish at 0730am in the morning combined with the decaying rubbish in roadsides is something quite indescribable !

The beach at Tanji, photo from Trip Advisor.

This was our first birdwatching trip to Tanji since our 2nd visit to Gambia back in 2002 and I was looking forward it it because it is by the sea so cooler and I like wading birds. First stop was Tujereng, a village a bit further down from Tanji we had a good walk round the reserve as the sun was coming up and had quite an impressive list to tick off, we've been walking round in the sun for a couple of hours now so we decided to head back on to the main road and stop at a bar for a cold drink before going down to Tanjji reserve.  So it was 4 Sprites - it is usual that the guide and driver are included in drink stops, and if we were to have lunch they would be asked to accompany us too but for that they would decline and eat the staff food which would be given to them free as a gift for bringing paying customers to the restaurant - the exception to this was when Buba was with us at Stala - while he would quite happily have eaten the staff food we specifically asked him to join us.

We were sitting happily watching an approaching donkey and cart slowing ambling along the road, we then heard a rather loud scraping/banging noise and realised that the young boy guiding the donkey had become preoccupied and the donkey and walked into Pax's car ! !

We paid and headed back to Tanji, and began the walk through the reserve, we had not gone far when it became apparent that there were not many birds to be seen and it was extremely hot (by now it is about 12midday) I mentioned walking on the beach and was told that wasn't really an option nowadays (they suffer with coastal erosion so the beach had probably gone) we decided it was far too hot and went on to the next and final stop of the day Brufut wood, another place we had visited previously but with it being a forest you have shelter from the sun.  We picked up the official guide (every Forest/wood seems to have one!) and set off.  Gambia does not have the infrastructure of modern countries and the photo below shows that they don't have regular refuse collections.

 We had realised by  now that Famara had been looking at the 'ticks' in our book and was trying to fill in the blanks, while this was very thoughtful of him it did mean that we spent a fair bit of time staring at particular trees because that was where his target bird liked to roost, personally I would have been happier wandering round the forest finding any birds, it doesn't bother me too much how many times we see each species. The target species on this trip was night jars and I'll be honest when we found it I was a little underwhelmed, I was only a couple of feet away from the bird but I still couldn't make out what I was looking at and even now when I know what it is it still looks like a san ache to me - if you were paying attention to a previous blog you will know what I mean by san ache! 

Long tailed night jar,  

We carried on round the forest and spotted many birds but didn't take too many photos. We saw another Verreaux Eagle owl and many other species mainly consisting of LBJ's or Little Brown Jobs which is how small plain birds are known locally!

Then it was time to go and thankfully there was a bar area where we could get a cold drink and wait for the taxi drive to wake up !

 The guides had put a bit of a feeding/watering station round here so many birds were coming down for drinks like us, the following photos weren't taken here but show the species that we watched while enjoying a bottle of Sprite and they were taken by me at some point during one of our holidays.

 Common Bulbul 

  

 Weaver birds

Yellow crowned Gonolek

Birding adventures

I know that you have all been waiting in anticipation of the next instalment (my tongue is very firmly in cheek!)  so sit back and enjoy a wander through the forests and reserves of Gambia.

A couple of days before our 2^nd trip to Gambia back in 2002 I came home from work and Ken excitedly told me he had bought me something ‘brilliant’ for the holiday – I stupidly thought it may be a pair of sunglasses or sandals or the like, but no, it was a book entitled  A Field Guide to Birds of The Gambia and Senegal by Clive Barlow at the time I was somewhat underwhelmed, however over the years this book has proved invaluable in identifying the species we see (and yes we do tick them off in the book!) it is generally regarded as the definitive guide – mine is doubly valuable because after a day out several years ago we stopped at a bar (as you do) and were looking through the book and ticking off when a man approached me and asked if I wanted him to write in my book I very nearly told him to do one but then he introduced himself as the one and only Mr Clive Barlow so I allowed him to write a dedication to me and since then all the local guides we have are very jealous when we show them the book, anyway back to the current trip.

As mentioned in a previous post we had hooked up with Famara as our bird guide and we had booked a couple of trips out with him and for reasons of not boring people with endless posts on the same subject I'm going to amalgamate the trips we made into one posting.  His fee was £70.00 and this included the hire of a car and driver but Ken is always very generous and they can expect a  tip at the end of each day out (usually about £3-£5

The days out started at 0700 the first destination was Mandina Ba so loaded up with binoculars, telescope, camera, bottle of water, mossie cream and goodness knows what else we headed south arriving at the reserve at about an hour later.  Mandina is a scrub land area we had a good hours walk round the reserve and notable birds included Short Toed Eagle, Lanner Falcon – raptors are mostly too far away to get photos – although Ken has mentioned buying another lens for the camera so maybe pictures next time!  Starting early means being able to pack more into the day and so after Mandina we headed off to the next reserve  Brikama woods and we are looking for Owls.  The guys who look after the reserve know which trees the birds like to roost in so it was almost a bit of a route march to the relevant trees, just a case of following a well trodden path,  but of course when you find the tree you then have to find the owl in it and generally they choose trees with the same markings as themselves just to make it even harder for us – naughty birds J

We found (with the help of the guides) African wood owl and Verreaux’s Eagle owl. (more pictures at the end - ha ha you have to read to the rubbish before you get the pics - unless you scroll of course - I won't be offended)

Spot the birdie - Verreaux's Eagle Owl

 Kawsu the bird guide at Pirang Forest

We woke up our driver (apparently  he likes to go dancing late into the night/morning) and set off however before we arrived at our next port of call we stopped at Famara’s  home compound, and he kindly invited us into his ‘house’ to meet his father.  Gambian men can marry up to 5 wives and all live in (I suppose) harmony in the same compound.  White people in non tourist areas are always a interesting spectacle for the local children and our visit was no exception soon we were surrounded by a mound of village children all asking for mints (their word for sweets), Ken gave them 25Dalasi and sent them over to the shop – this is about 50p he expected them to have a bag of sweets which he had appointed the eldest looking girl to share out but the shopkeeper had other ideas and each child was given one sweet each, they seemed happy enough.  We had a cold drink and then it was on to the Shrimp farm at Pirang a place we had visited previously with much birding success. However we were less successful on this occasion as the farm had been drained so no water means no birds – well very little anyway, last time we had seen hundreds of pelicans and flamingos amongst others. 
It was very hot by now and the backs of my legs were starting to burn and with not many birds to see it was getting a bit boring, so we called it a day and headed back to the hotel area for a shower and rest before heading out for some dinner - I'm going to bore you with a post about food and drinks later. 

Gambian compund, they vary in size and 'opulence' depending on the wealth of the family, this one was typical of the type Famara's family live in. Most have electric but not running water - this is fetched (usually by the children) from a communal well - photo from Trip Advisor,

The white bird is a cattle egret, the brown bird (on the hind leg of the animal) is an oxpecker, so that makes the animal a  . . . . . . . COW !

On our previous holiday I took the following photo of a male beautiful sunbird, which people have said is a good photo.

This year Ken was determined to get a better picture, below is his offering - you decide which is better !

Senegal Coucal

One (very) large child and several smaller ones

a lot of time birdwatching is spent looking up at trees !

the black & white ones are pied crows, the larger ones are eating a dead captain fish and are hooded vultures

red billed firefinch, a bit like our finches but redder !

we're not sure what this one is, so if in doubt they are usually Dark Chanting Goshwaks,

it's not just birds we see, these are red colobus monkeys the one at the back has a baby,

this is bee nest

Senegal Thicknee

this colourful chap is a bearded barbet

That'll do for now, more to follow later ! !