A month later, I'm back here again as a tour leader at the sudden request from a China TV Crew for their adventure fishing program shoot....
Well, as usual, before the start, we need to stock up before the journey. It was an eye opener for the Chinese with what the local market had to offer..... 1st off - wallaby (what do you think of that?)
Next, termite nest for making soup to enhance health and body strength.... Wanna try???
But all the above is just for shooting sake... Well, what do you know? Not all Chinese are that adventurous as claimed by the proverbial phrase, "Anything that walks, swim, crawls or flies with its back to heaven is edible"...
Basically, the program is to document the local livelihood, people, culture. And of course, fishing is the main subject....
Look at the big stack of program list........ Hope they don't expect too high from me....hehehe!
For the first part, we ventured to a freshwater swamp not so far off from the town near by.....
The month of November is the start of the monsoon rain here... Although the journey is not too far away, but it was made more treacherous due to the rainfall.....
Reaching the entry to the village by the swamp. The village men are preparing to mend ready roads for the coming monsoon season....
Sights from the village....
Our reporter cum cameraman is a young lady from China.... She is really hard working and took up this project enthusiastically....
This is not an easy job for everyone like her, no 5-star restaurant, and no 5-star hotel where we go....
.... coupled with insect bites and insufficient basic facility....
A local kid hunting a bat and showing it off to our lady cameraman....
Off we headed for the swamp the next morning....
Due to the monsoon period coming, all the village men are busy working to prepare for it... So, only village ladies were available to be our paddle boatman...... Well, please don't ask me how good they are.... Sighhh.....
Rain fell every day here, The water level rose more than 1 foot higher since last month, making the fish very scattered... All morning, we could not get any fish at all.....
Take a lunch break before we continued to fish....
Finally, we caught some fishes in the evening....
Our anglers from China are so excited with their catches from the swamp....
Since the result here yesterday was not so welcoming, after much discussion, we changed plans and decided to head off to another location proposed by the locals to try out our luck.....
This new location is a place that is close to the border of Papua New Guinea....
And we have to pay a visit to the border outpost before venturing further....
Every new location takes some time and effort to negotiate with the locals....
A gift of tobacco is a MUST as part of the negotiation.... If you don't have it, don't even think about starting a conversation....
After much negotiation, then the villagers gather their canoes to prepare for our fishing purpose...
Some of the canoes were leaking.... and what do you know, they use clay and mud to patch it up....
Well, we caught nothing that evening, but the villagers caught some Tilapias and they cook some for our consumption..... What a poor start to the day again....
There was another river near by, There is no one living along this black water river..... so we decided to give it a try.... but it was not accessible by our canoes....
So, I decided to try from the bank...
What I caught was all Common Snakeheads only.....
So, the next day, we went back to the village and hired a truck to carry our canoes from the village to the small black water river....
What do you know? Nothing was caught at the small black water river but just Common Snakeheads... The locals said the river is too shallow for Barramundi and Saratoga to stay in....
Because of the uncertain outcome from the new locations, we decided to head back to the swamp where we had fished 2 days ago....
And believe it or not, this time we made the right choice of returning to fish at the swamp. We can't explain why the fish won't bite earlier, but we are so lucky to hit the jackpot just in front of the village this time...
Way to go! Huge Barramundis for everyone....
Strikes after strikes....
Well, a happy ending for everyone.....
