Fishing Yourself Single Andy Coetzee Craig Thomassen 9781770074835-978-1-77007-483-5

Fishing Yourself Single, by Andy Coetzee and Craig Thomassen. Struik Publishers. Cape Town, South Africa 2007. ISBN 9781770074835 / ISBN 978-1-77007-483-5

Among numerous angling places in South Africa introduced in their book, Fishing Yourself Single, Andy Coetzee and Craig Thomassen decribe Kosi Mouth as a special highlight.

Kosi Mouth, the Golden Hour

‘The Mouth’, as John, Barry and I call it, is where my ashes are to be strewn on a full moon, an hour-and-a-half after high tide. That is the time when the water pushed in by the spring tide will turn and slowly start to flow out into the ocean. This is my wish to my brother, children and close fishing friends. My affiliation with Kosi Mouth is a long one, having fished it since the early 80s. Legendary giant kingfish or trevally are commonly spoken of with reverence by the fishermen who have hooked them as kingies, iggies or GTs. In my book, you qualify to refer to them by those names only if you have landed one in the surf. Don’t let any wet-behind-the-ears young upstart saunter up to you and talk about those majestic fish without showing them some respect. Bruised knuckles, broken fingers, snapped rods and lacerated fishing line are the dues you have to pay before you get to shed even a single tear of absolute admiration for the GT - the King, the bully of the shallow-water surf zones, the maker of dreams and, just as easily, the destroyer of them. As a young boy, growing up, I saw my first GT caught in the annual sardine run off Scottburgh on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast. The aggressive grunt and grind of the pharyngeal plates remain imprinted on my young mind. Transported back in time, I can still hear the grind - standing on a wildly chaotic beach with hundreds of people milling around, scooping sardines out of the water, womenfolk hoisting up skirts full of wriggling silver-blue fish; men cursing, yelling and shouting instructions to each other to pull the cast-nets in. Dark, shadowy, bullet-like shapes darted and scythed their way through the thousands of fish packed tightly together. Then the arrival of the beast! In their flight of terror and survival, sardine eyes looked backwards as the light grey-blue sheen of the massive profiles charged through the shoal, gulping them down by the mouthful; long pectoral fins rigidly flared as the killing-machine, locked onto its prey, head-butted stray fish out of the way. I can still see and smell that experience, and the introduction to my first GT. It is small wonder then, that my now ex-wife accused me of being obsessed. Well, maybe I am. As my dear fishing friend and co-author Craig Thomassen once so succinctly put it, ‘I fished myself single’. I have made my peace with my ex-wife for that fever and passion and solitary, single-minded pursuit. I actually hid a fishing rod in the honeymoon camper-van, just in case I got a chance to fish. Not a good idea, when you can fish for the rest of your life and stay married. It didn’t work that way for me, because if you are obsessed with something, you will always find a way of justifying it to convince your partner that you really, really needed to have just a few casts! Enough said about my ex-wife, who must have suffered many a lonely day and night as I fished with little regard for her needs. I know she knows what I am talking about! I am sorry, Kim! When I started work, doing fisheries research for the Conservation department in Maputaland, I heard of a job that had become available doing rice research. My twin brother, Mark, had just finished an agriculture degree, and was working on a trout farm near Dullstroom. I phoned him, and he was later offered the post. Now the cat was amongst the pigeons. [...]

This is an excerpt from Fishing Yourself Single, by Andy Coetzee and Craig Thomassen.

Title: Fishing Yourself Single
Authors: Andy Coetzee; Craig Thomassen
Genre: Fishing/angling memoirs
Publisher: Struik Publishers
Cape Town, South Africa 2007
ISBN 9781770074835 / ISBN 978-1-77007-483-5
Paperback, 15 x 21 cm, 168 pages