Sunday, February 10, 2008

Skunked on the Heart of Darkness

First time out with a fly rod this year.

The project work ended in the early afternoon Wednesday. So before we stared the 41 hour Thursday morning flight-wait-flight-wait-flight land in Chicago trip home we headed down to the river. The Niger ( pronounced kneejher ) flows about 10K south of Timbuktu, and it’s port village is Koriume. Rented a pirogue with driver for a short river cruise with our work gang.

The pirogue



The pirogue driver




Casting on the river





I of course had no idea what I was fishing for, or where, or anything. The scenery was interesting. The area around the port village was pretty dense with people. My guess is that it is heavily fished, netted, and trapped for the surrounding near kilometers. I didn’t have the time to really explore as the rest of crew were out for a cruise not a fish. Flyfishing: not a spectator sport.







Something sank here.




There was evidence of fish. This guy was throwing a net for the couple hours we were out on the river. His sum total catch.



Figured I’d leave you with this one. This is a fetish stand. I don’t think they eat the heads for bush meat, they use them for juju. Let me know if anyone needs any of this stuff as tying materials.

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