I return from the city to our country ‘estate’( ;)) every weekend and this last was no exception to the weekly rule. On Saturday, after a physically demanding and quite moo-deafening morning rounding up cows and their new calves for de-knackering and ear-tagging, The Bloke and I decided that an afternoon of chucking a line in the Mighty Murray might do very nicely indeed. Cod season opened last Monday, so anything we catch now (over the necessary size etc) is actually legal. Not that we’ve ever kept anything we’ve hooked before this date, oh no, we wouldn’t do that, not ever. 
So we jumped on the quad bike and headed down the block to our fave spot on the banks of the river.
I’m a simple fisherwoman…give me a rod and some bait and I’ll happily while away the hours doing absolutely nothing except contemplating the swirls in the river, the everchanging cloud formations, and wishing I had a boom-box playing nasty thrash music to make the noise of the white cockatoos’ screeching above sound definitely sweeter. I do like the occasional ‘bite’ just to reassure me that I still have bait more than anything, but don’t care one whit if I catch a fish or not. Heaven is ok just as it is.
The Bloke is a bit more serious about fishing than me (and of course always catches more fish), always rigs his line ‘just right’, casts his line ‘just in the right spot’ and gets ‘just a little more antzy’ if the fish ain’t bitin’. He had TWO fishing-rods set out on Saturday, to be doubly sure.
Well, the fish weren’t exactly queueing up to commit piscine suicide on Sat’dy arvo. Maybe it was the phase of the moon, or maybe it was the stink of the rancid mozzarella cheese we were using for bait, but they just weren’t willing to die for the frypan on this occasion. Buggers. I was really hanging out for a bit of baked fish for dinner too. 
So we called it a day just as the sun was dripping gold and red over the western plains: I reeled my line in and The Bloke retrieved his first one and set about dismantling it. I guess we were both a bit preoccupied at the time…
Don’t they say you should never turn your back on the water? I know it mostly means when you’re on the beach or rock fishing just in case a big-arse wave comes up and sweeps you off to your certain death by shark or some worser fate, but they SHOULD warn lazy-bum old river-fishers too.
We heard a swishing noise, and both turned around to watch the (very expensive) rod heading out to water at the rate of knots, so to speak. Something, I’m imagining a very BIG something decided that mouldy cheese was really quite a delicacy afterall. Shame that the rod was only semi-secured to a branch of a dead redgum, and a bigger shame that the reel-lock was on rather than having a running line. Bloody great shame all 'round really.
I enjoy funny things, and I find many things quite amusing in life (mostly sardonic stuff if the truth be known), but I had never pissed my pants from sheer beautiful laughter before The One That Got Away, got away on Saturday afternoon on the banks of the Murray River.
We had sausages for dinner.