Extreme Fishing Read Online Free PDF Page A

my room but they are everywhere: in my bed, my bathroom, my drawers (honest!) and my shower. I banish
most to the verandah and try to get some kip but all I can hear is them scratching with their tiny little claws at the door: ‘Let me in. Let me in.’ An army of Cathys at the French
windows: ‘It’s me . . . I’ve come home. I’m so cold, let me in at your window . . .’
    I put a pillow over my head to muffle Kate Bush and that’s when I come cheek to cheek with cold exoskeleton. I scream and the night turns murderous as I embark upon a killing spree. I
stove the crabs’ heads in with my trusty priest – not a local Catholic Father, but the wooden tool I use for knocking fish on the head. And now crustacea, too. Die!!!
    I return to bed,
fruits de mer
splattered across the room, put my empty wash bag over ‘me night fishing tackle’ and try to get some shut-eye. In the morning I close the door
on room 25 and leg it from the scene of the crime. It’s a room I won’t forget in a hurry.
    *
    Director Ross Harper asks me to do a PTC about my crab hell. As I explain why there are so many of them, I pick one up for a more visual effect. Yes, it’s definitely more visual: the
blighter nips my little finger, and as I pull my hand away its arm comes off. Oops. There’s an inhalation of breath from the crew and a squeal from me as I realise its nipper is still
pinching my finger. The cameraman pulls the detached arm off. I tell viewers it will grow back, and indeed it will. I mention nothing of the crab pâté in room 25.
    Upala
    As you can imagine, after the night I’d experienced, I am feeling pretty rotten. Plus there was no hot water either, so morale is low. We get in the minibus around 4
a.m. and travel several hours by road to meet a man called Alex Arias, the president of El Club Nacional de Pesca de Costa Rica. The club is a big deal and I need to impress the main man. However,
I am not impressed by what Alex proposes I do. He wants me to float down the hot, muddy, crocodile-infested Río Pizote – without a boat. And, what’s more, while being swept down
the river in only my shorts and a life-jacket, I have to fish for the toothy first cousin of the piranha, the machaca. This is madness. I need to speak to my agent – except I haven’t
got one.
    I turn accusingly to the director and ask why he hasn’t let me in on this secret before now. Ross says, ‘Because otherwise you’d never have agreed to it.’ Fair enough.
He’s right – but angry emails are going to be written later.
    The thought of having a limb removed by a reptile, or my nadgers munched off by a machaca, doesn’t half focus the mind. Alex, a dark and handsome smooth-talking bar steward, smiles and
says, ‘Don’t worry, Robson, it’ll be fine – but if you see a sign saying “Welcome to Nicaragua”, then you’ve gone too far.’
    ‘Great,’ I say, grinning, beginning to draft my incandescent email to Hamish.
    ‘But seriously,’ says Alex, ‘if you get to the border you need to turn around and swim upstream very fast – the guards are bored so they might “shoot you up”.
Understand? Apart from that, this method of fishing is perfectly safe.’
    I look down at the river from the bridge. It’s in full flood and swimming upstream would be impossible. A river like this in the UK would be declared unfishable – and besides,
it’s swimming-pool temperature, so I imagine the fish are half-cooked already. Alex says, ‘Shall we jump off the bridge, Robson?’
    ‘No, Alex, let’s not. Let’s leave that to Daniel Craig.’
    We are using spinning rods with little lures to attract the machaca, which takes me back to when I was a lad messing about on the River Coquet in Northumberland with Matheson.
When I was about twelve or thirteen, we would spin for trout using Mepps that spun through the water like shiny two-pence pieces. A fly-fishing purist like my uncle wasn’t really keen on
spinning but it was a