September finally arrived and now all I need to wait for is the first storm of the season, knowing that it would bring with it the right conditions for the fish to start biting. Surely enough I woke up to what seemed to be a normal hot summer's day but checking the daily forecast, I noticed that we may be in for a change after the long hot summer. Soon after I contacted my fishing buddy Pierre to give him the news and prepare his gear for some possible fishing, should the weather forecast be correct. Early afternoon, the wind changed direction and started picking bringing towering clouds over the island and most importantly roughing up the seas. We started celebrating like crazy; I seriously doubt that we would have been happier if we had won the lottery.
At this point it was unanimously decided that we would spend the night fishing off the Birzebbugia pier at Pretty Bay at least till the sea got so rough that we could not fish any more.
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At around 2000, we grabbed our fishing tackle and set off on a mission. This happened quite some time ago, suffice to say that our fishing tackle consisted of one 6m bamboo pole each which we had to be maneuvered out of the house with a degree of difficulty careful not to break anything precious, a canvas bag containing some hooks, some fishing line and a large tomato paste tin with crushed bread mixed with mature cheese for ground bait. And of course a traditional bucket, as keep nets in those days where non existent.
We started rigging our rods and chucked in our rudimentary ground bait hoping that the fish would be lured by its smell. Our rig consisted of a.30m line combined with a size 4 hook in hope of landing some biggies. We opted not to use a float but we did attach a few sinkers on the line to be able to feel any bites on the rod tip in the blowing wind. The usual yet trusty plain bread paste mixed with cheese was used for bait. As you can imagine we started fishing with great anticipation and one can only picture the look in my eyes when after a few minutes I could feel something pulling on my line. I instinctively struck and sure enough I had something on, something heavy. I immediately told my buddy that I had a big one and had already started teasing him that I had got the very first one and it looked like a big catch. One can only imagine the look on my face when I saw the fish I had hooked, had the shape of a size 44 boot, Pierre could not stop laughing and making fun of me. I had no other choice but to put my head down and accept whatever was thrown at me. I got the boot off the hook and tossed it behind us so we would not catch it again.
Hardly 10mins had passed when I look at my friends rod bent and him struggling with whatever he had caught. He let it be known in the most clear of ways that his was most certainly a fish. Unbelievably as it may seem another boot was hanging down his line. Now it was my turn to give him some stick. He kept on asking me why I had thrown mine back in the sea; I had not, but could not stop laughing enough to tell him, I just pointed behind us to the other one. Coincidentally we had actually hooked the complete pair.
But the next tug was not a shoe as both our rods were suddenly in action again, both of us fighting a nice fish, bringing in a nice mullet and a bream (Sargu). In just a few hours the wind had increased significantly and it was near to impossible to feel the fish biting. By this time it was near to impossible to feel the fish biting as the wind had increased too much, so we opted to just rest our fishing gear on the pier in hope that we would see the rods move when we got a bite, and bite they did as whenever the rods bounced it was invariably a mullet or some nice bogue (vopa), on the other hand if the rod simply flew out then it was a bream. This was a night to remember; in the end we could hardly carry all the fish home. Unfortunately we had to call it an early night as the sea was getting so rough that it was impossible to continue fishing. Tight Lines everybody!
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