Manning up

As a child I have an abiding memory of my first rugby match - another eight year got tackled and threw the ball at me as he lay on the ground.  I threw it back at him - humiliation. It wasn't like it was a conscious decision I just wasn't that interested and give or take a few horrors I've managed to avoid making a prat of myself in sports with any kind of technical factor since I left school.
But I digress. That doesn't mean I want to look like a shrieking wallflower but I do have shocking coordination so I was slightly anxious about the deep sea fishing trip while we were in Cuba. There we were in the middle of the Caribbean with two swarthy, taciturn sailors trawling for barracuda.

R (bastard) knows about these things and had already established a rapport with the swarthies.  I'd already been caught taking too many pictures of R fishing which the swarthies had wanted to look at. Thankfully I'd had the foresight to get rid of the naked pictures also on my camera or we might have had a man overboard situation. 

R caught the first barracuda in excellent fashion and then it was my go. Chief swarthy strapped me into a harness for additional control (a harness!) and off we went.  I was struggling with the idea of pulling in the fish and then reeling like mad as you let the rod drop - it felt like it was going to be confusing and I managed to unscrew the handle of the rod for starters. 
I took ages and made a prat of myself but I caught the barracuda and then another. The adrenaline was pumping and maybe it was that second rum and coke but I felt a particular affinity with my hunter gatherer ancestors.  Check out our final haul.