While clicking through some old Sport Fishing wallpaper downloads the other day, I stumbled onto a shot I hadn’t seen in quite a while – but it immediately brought a chuckle. Snapped by Dave Lewis (david.lewis21@btconnect.com), a veteran photographer from South Wales, this has to be one of the best “grin-and-grabs” ever taken.
How can you not smile looking at this? And how in the world did that meerkat ever sneak into the shot? Curious to know more, I wrote Lewis, and he gave me the low-down:
“The little chap’s name was pronounced ‘curry,’ but spelled some other way. At the time, I was regularly hosting surf-fishing trips to the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, and he belonged to Jens, one of our guides. Each day he would ride up in the front of the truck with us, and when we stopped to fish, he would spend the day digging holes in the sand and generally foraging around. Whenever a bird flew over, he would run to the nearest angler and sit as tight as he could to their legs for protection. As you can see, he loved having his photo taken.”
The meerkat obviously makes the shot. But in case you were wondering, those are big silver kob the anglers are holding. Members of the drum family, these are certainly nice specimens — but silver kob grow upward of 150 pounds! And apparently, the shores of Namibia are quite the place, according to Lewis:
“The surf fishing in Namibia is, from my experience, the best in the world. Big kob, steenbras and other ‘edible’ fish species, plus loads of sharks. Most of our groups would be focused on catching bronze whalers that averaged 150-plus pounds and regularly topped 250 pounds – hard work under a hot desert sun.”
Sounds like an amazing place, indeed.
