Local Pond Fishing

It was great to see one of my relatives fishing and by the time I followed him to watch the event, it was already his third trip to the local pond capturing locally grown Tilapia.  It is refreshing to witness local subsistence skill sets being outworked in what might be perceived as either a difficult or impossible environment to survive. You will find many empty land plots as you travel to local residential villages and more often than not, the locals will clear the land and plant fruit and vegetables for personal consumption as well as for sale in the local markets.  The owners of the land are happy with this un-official agreement/arrangement because their land is cleared and kept in order until they need use of it of course.

I was invited to join him and wade through the local pond but because of my memory as a child with local folklore stating giant snakes residing in the waters, I was surprised by the lack of motivation to join him in his quest to catch some fish 🙂  I was happy to record the event and then join in on the consumption of his catch!  As you can see from the images, the Tilapia were of a good size and when grilled over coconut coal, was delicious.

His neighbours are aware of his skills and I saw a number of them coming to his home to purchase some freshly caught fish from the day.  I was also informed that there are some large catfish in the pond, but I have yet to see these being caught.

Photography – Local Pond Fishing

All images were captured with the Nikon D5100 and the image of my cousin fishing with his net was taken with the nikon 28-300mm lens stretched out to its maximum zoom at 300mm (equivalent to approx. 450mm in full frame 35mm terms) at f5.6, 1/160th at iso1100. I dialled the exposure compensation to -o.7 to provide a little more depth to the image to capture deeper blacks for that dramatic look.  The photos of the fish themselves in the bowl and on the scale was taken with the Nikon 35mm lens at f4.5, 1/80th at iso100.