Senga Bay, Lake Malawi - Day 2

Met a fisherman named Lucky on the beach and we took his dugout canoe for a paddle to a nearby island. The open waters on this massive lake get pretty choppy, and the boat leaked a liter a minute. We spent as much time bailing water out of the boat as he did paddling. We made it to the island and walked to the highest point for a clear view of Mozambique, found some cliffs to jump off, and scared the large monitor lizards.

In the evening, we went fishing! As dusk fell, we departed by motorboat from Senga Bay and headed deep into Lake Malawi. I didn't really know what to expect - just that we were using some big nets to catch some fish. We were a crew of nine - with three dugout canoes balanced over the gunnels of the larger motored boat. Lucky was the only other English speaker. I felt like an investigative reporter as I imagined the killer blog post.

After about 30 minutes, we cut the engine and measured the depth of the water with some string. We used bright lights as bait - two canoes were dropped off each equipped with an array of Coleman lanterns. The net was strung between a third canoe and the motorboat. We'd chill out until the guys with lights saw fish, and then the motorboat would drive a circle (radius 100m) around them. Hoist in the nets and you got yo-self some fish. Pretty cool for the first five times or so.

Sometimes we caught just a hundred minnows or so. Other times we'd catch some decent sized fish along with thousands of minnows. My conservative estimate is that we caught around 130,000 fish - we lined the whole bottom of the boat. Everything smelled like fish. Interesting fact - fish-slime is not readily cleansed from cotton (my shirt) but comes out of polyester (my pants).

I was thoroughly entertained. But I got tired of fishing by about 1 am. I got really tired of fishing by 3 am. And my 4 am I hated everything about fish. When we arrived back in Senga Bay, the guys hauled the fish to the morning markets. I went to sleep.