Stab In The Dark

ja

i had the winter mix weighed out, the solstice brew uncorked. migrating carp & the winkle-pickers flown in on a delivery of east winds, birdman tarred & feathered against the gales. even had the roasted chestnuts on the stove and the cold-times water chosen for the sign that points me there:

another public dunny, 2 litre coca-cola bottles floating in the margins, enough to moor the amada, a 6 acre municipal pit-stop, a layby for the macdonalds petrol heads:

the carp reduced to a handful of survivors post-plunder, the white van apocalypse, the curse of france, the english carp angler hated here once again, that lust of the lake owners for the bonus 40 from the poor man’s waters. bolt-rig colonialism, everyone here knows who’s fucking lake the carp are now in, who ordered the hit and how cheap they come, how cheap the shroud of hypocrisy in english carp mags where no one dares to mention carp rustling, they’re up to their necks in it.
the cleansing on dunny-pit is a war crime, but the few remainders, the evadors, are all 25 plus. my third time out, a wednesday lull in the eastern chill and an early touch, a fluke, and it’s in the net, this 29 as surprised as me, probably more surprised it wasn’t bundled into the transit, bound for halibut-pellet heaven:

then the sun came out for october, the moon swelled up and it was autumn again. last week the silent buzzers creaked into life like a goods train crawling over dead man’s gulch. a town pit twenty-four under a cloud, a carp with a grudge:

friday night on dunny pit, should’ve known better. a gang of herons boozing on fry. big carp thumps on the plateau a yard off my right hand bait. screaming run, on both rods: pie-eyed heron takes out both my lines and i’m flying a kite in the dark. it winches bomb and hooklink off the plateau and when the time comes for our marginal conflict out comes the kitchen beak, psycho-heron stabing at my wrists, egged on by her beanpole legged slag-sisters.
hunting postponed, back to gathering:

stab-vest & anti-heron alarms on the birdtable

dp