My Walkabout

Some of my earliest, happiest memories involve fishing. Sitting with my Mom and Pop along a lake shore as a child, biking with my best friends to a local pond during the long summer vacations as a kid, and more recently sitting solitary along a slow moving river just reading and enjoying nature.
But I’d never thought I would be stick fishing for piranhas in the Amazon.

“Life is funny” I thought as I was handed a raw chunk of beef to use as bait. With the line only being about fifteen feet long at the most, tied to a five foot stick, I flung the raw meat as far as possible into the green water, letting my natural fishing instincts kick in.
It wasn’t more than a few seconds when I felt the first hard bite. I soon got a feel for how the fish were hitting the bait, and before long I was flinging piranha’s into our boat, to the amazement of the other fishers and the guide.
I was in heaven.
The others kept asking me for my secret, but I didn’t have one. It would be like asking Michael Jordan how to play basketball, or Stephen King how to write horror.
You just do.

As tales of fishing go, this day was one that will be drifting at the top.