By Geoff Lacey:
(See Geoff's weekly report here.)

Even fishing guides have bad days, I guess...

Right at the end of the last year's trout fishing season, I took some clients to Falls Creek, intent on having a last go at some browns who live in a lovely stream up there.

What a mistake. Less than half an hour after arriving we encountered a freezing gale force wind, complete with ice cold rain, driven horizontally and numbing any exposed skin on contact. Such conditions are not unusual for high altitudes at that time of year, but totally unexpected on our part.

Bejabbers, it was cold! No fishing here today, lads.

It was then that a client's peaked cap was blown off his head by an icy blast coming straight off the South Pole, I reckon. The cap blew some distance and landed upside down in the creek (luckily), and began to float as the wind directed.

Sitting fairly deep in the water, the darned thing actually sailed upstream at a rate of knots against a fairly stiff current that was flowing at the time.

So there was me, running along the bank like a demented spaniel or something, chasing a stupid cap which looked like sinking at anytime. It was eventually retrieved when it was driven ashore by the wind, then we left. And good riddance, for now!

(19 October 2001)


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