Of Rainbows and Striped Glinders in GouvesSitting here looking out of my back window at the dark grey clouds gathering in the ever darkening sky, with my summer holiday suntan fading away as quickly as Sheffield United’s chance of a premiership return, I am trying to choose the best of my holiday shots before I wipe the memory card to make way for more Trent monsters!Looking at the pictures of the multi-coloured small fish that punctuated my holiday with a disproportionate amount of happiness, I realize that fish do not have to be in possession of paired sets of barbules, enclosed within a fine suit of bronzed scales and weigh in excess of 10lb to make me feel contented and fulfilled. On the contrary in fact, fishing is one of those sports where size and the time scale of success is not relative to the amount of satisfaction gained. Deciding that I would be fishing during my holiday was a complete no-brainer but now we have luggage restrictions and all manner of check-in troubles at our airports thanks to our ‘friends from the East’ what I was going to take with me to facilitate a bit of relief from constant Gyro and Souvlaki consumption was a different case altogether! The bazooka rod tube was asking for trouble. Walking into East Midland Airport with something that resembled a surface to air missile was bound to attract the attention of Messer’s Heckler and Koch and so it was decided that I would borrow a telescopic rod from my fishing partner Martin Womble. Tina was a bit choked (She probably thought that the life insurance and compensation would have gone a long way to buying her and Olivia a nice little smallholding on the south coast and a reasonable pension to live on). She was still trying to stick the thing in the taxi as we left. We arrived in CreteAnyway, not many hours after leaving the dismal grey weather that has been England’s summer 2007 (But after enduring being stuck into a thin metal tube with wings that move and several big engines that make weird noises that blasted me high into the sky at several hundred miles per hour) I was walking along the beach in Crete (Occasionally dropping to my knees and kissing the sand, wondering if there is a ferry home option) clutching my snorkel and face mask starting all manner of rumours amongst the locals about a mad man or possibly an escapee from the zoo!
The fishing in Crete was going to be as I expected it to be… tricky! The last time I visited the place we stayed just outside the resort of Hersonissos and I caught a lot of Mullet and Wrasse but not a lot of size. Except the fish which followed me whilst snorkeling for hotspots which was massive! A big mullet of record proportions followed me for a good few minutes, probably curious as to what a Gorilla was doing in the Aegean! This time we stayed a few resorts further to the West in a place called Gouves, and very nice it was too! The temperature was unseasonably warm, even for the Greeks with daytime peaks hitting 48 degrees. Cooked like a pig at a hog roast, but no appleMy plan was to snorkel about and find the best fishing spots for later in the week. I snorkelled and snorkelled and snorkelled till my throat was sore and my back felt quite warm from the sun – warm being an understatement once the cooling effects of the clear blue Aegean wore off. I had cooked myself like a pig at a hog roast, all that was missing was a bleeding apple stuck in my gob and a parsnip up my….well I am sure you get the message!Factor 50 sun-creams or not, if the stuff isn’t waterproof then your protection is compromised! So I spent the next three days smothered in yoghurt and lathered in lots of lard like after-sun looking like a half cooked Roman-Greco wrestler and sleeping on my stomach and threatening to kill anyone that slapped me on the back. Eventually the burns healed and I was ready to start my fishing campaign.
Fishing Robinson Crusoe styleAll I had packed was hooks, swivels, shot, a few floats, a reel, a rod and a pair of pliers. Hardly fully loaded, but adequate. Adequate for what I wanted; fishing Robinson Crusoe style! As for bait I had decided that sweetcorn would do the trick. Wrong! I spent three hours watching hordes of mini-mullet eat every grain in a can barring the one on my hook. My loafer float refusing to do anything more dramatic than occasional give a nervous twitch.I needed a change of bait and tactics as this was definitely not working. I hadn’t brought any leger weights with me fearing the baggage weight Gestapo would inflict their vengeance upon my wallet (After waiving through the three gigantically proportioned fat Rotherham lasses on their way out to Malia for a bit of what they cannot get off the sober lads at home. T’is a simple fact that if drunk lads did not put on their beer goggles and mix with fat lasses they would be more stringent with their intake of calories instead of blaming their glands and over sized bone structure – as they ram the fourth Victoria sponge down their fat, greedy, triple chinned necks!) and so without the luxury of a custom made lead weight I decided to fashion one ‘McGyver style’ from a kidney shaped pebble some 10lb line and a swivel which I would lock in place using a bb shot! As the fish were very small I would use a size 14 Drennan super specialist. The tricky thing would be a new bait. Bread in Crete is great but it doesn’t lend itself to fishing like Warburton’s or Hovis and the bread/oil paste the locals make is about as tricky to keep on the hook as master wriggler Tony Blair would be. Tony Blair our much beloved ex prime minister, ex-president of Europe, the World, and all he surveys in the galaxy with his all seeing, ever misted over prophetic eye, yep, keeping old smiley on the hook would be child’s play in comparison, even if he was dressed in a Dwarf made Mithral suit! Then it came to me: Hermit crabs and limpets; easy to collect and an almost limitless supply! Plus, I thought that they may be more attractive to the Wrasse type fish than a slice of bread. So armed with a pocket full of crabs (Not much has changed there then) I decided to try again! Soon I had caught a small iridescent blue fish that seemed to be some type of Wrasse. What type? I have no idea. Soon I had a small fan club of locals and holidaymaking kids, all gathering bait and offering advice. The leader of this group and my favourite was a young lad called Alexandria. He made me bait, snorkelled to find fish and also harboured a strong desire to have a go with my fishing rod! Olivia (my daughter) found that this really brought out the green eyed monster in her and when I compounded it by proclaiming Alexandria the ‘champion fish putter backer’er’ she immediately stopped building her sandcastle and informed me in no uncertain terms that she was the ‘champion’ and would be releasing all fish caught by myself from this moment on. Failure to comply on my part, would be sufficient grounds to terminate her good behaviour contract without notice and she would then be entitled to kick-off big-time!
Not wanting to incur the wrath of the wild-eyed Olivia I decided that it was time for her to have a go with the rod, I hadn’t had much for a while and I thought that the sooner she gets used to the actual fishing part of fishing rather than the watching part the better. After all She will hopefully be accompanying me more often now she is old enough not to throw herself in the water. We have had a couple of sessions before now, the worst (best) one being a pike fishing session to Dam Flask which lasted under an hour before she had fallen in and we were all back in the car and on our way home. Olivia’s Rainbows and Sriped GlindersAnd fish she did, no sooner had she gotten hold of the rod did the tip start to rattle and I told her to strike and reel in. The top hooped over as far as any rod would whilst playing a 4oz monster and within seconds Olivia was in possession of her first fish, a bright blue Wrasse type fish that had a liking for limpets.“What type of fish is it Dad? What is its name?” Asked Olivia “I don’t know Olivia…I think it’s a…” “Rainbow….I am going to call it Rainbow” And so the fish was renamed ‘Rainbow’ which seems an apt name for such a pretty fish and not wanting to incur any type of fury from a seven year old brandishing what is to her a carbon fibre whip that can quite easily be used to thrash her father into agreement I smiled. After all, my daughter had caught her first fish….I didn’t really care if she called it Norbert.
“What type of fish is it Dad? What is its name?” Again asked Olivia. “I don’t know Olivia…I think it’s a…” “This fish is a Striped Glinder.” “A Glinder?” I asked. “A Striped Glinder….I am going to call it a Striped Glinder” Olivia caught several more ‘Glinders’ and lots of ‘Rainbows’ as well as a ‘Horse face’ before it was time to leave the beach. The sun was becoming too hot to stand in and the smell of grilled meats and the thought of cold beers were beginning to take their toll on my empty stomach. Fishing on holiday can be a fantastic experience either done with all the equipment that the tackle trade has to offer or, like myself, with everything cut down to the bone. It is after all not all about the size of the fish but the size of the memories. And these memories are enormous. |
Welcome!Log into your account
