A Place of Brightness: fishing

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Smallest Ever Catch on a Fish Hook?

While fishing today, I cast out, saw some action on the line, felt a little fight and then ... nothing. Experience has taught me that there is now a good chance that the worm on my hook has been stolen and I will need to reapply bait.

And so, I reel in the line. Now, at my little fishing spot, on the north end of my property, I invariably have to reel back through a patch of weeds. As I set my pole on the picnic table on my pier, I see something on the hook. It looks small and black. I assume at first glance that a portion of the worm survived the incident and I will be able to just reapply some more worm on top of this remnant.

A closer examination, however, initially confused me. That's no worm. What is that thing?

I have to take my glasses off to look at anything close up (even my bifocals are no good for very close up inspection). And, lo and behold, I see that I have hooked ... a small snail!

I'm honestly asking the question. Might this possibly be the world record smallest living organism ever caught by a fish hook?

Granted, every time you reel in, there are microbes on the hook smaller than this guy. But I can dip my finger in the water and bring up microbes.

This snail was actually caught by the tip of the barb of that hook.

Mirabile dictu, the little guy survived! As I removed him from the hook, I saw that the snail had contracted safely into his shell.

This picture doesn't really show well the scale of just how small this thing was. I use small hooks because, fact is, you can catch even the biggest fish with a small hook, but you can't catch small fish with a big hook. The leader the hook is on provides a bit of perspective on the relatively small size of the hook and, therefore, the tininess of that snail!

I practice catch and release. And so, back in the water he went!

Looking forward to catching you again some day, Mr. Snail. When you're bigger and can put up more of a fight...

Keith Massey was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He has his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Biblical Hebrew, with a minor in Arabic. After 9/11, he served as an Arabic linguist at the NSA. He is currently a Latin teacher at a public high school in New Jersey.

Keith is the author of Intermediate Arabic for Dummies. His fiction novels follow the adventures of Andrew Valquist, roughly patterned after himself--a man born and raised in Wisconsin who gets pulled into the world of international intrigue.

Keith's novels are A Place of Brightness, Amor Vincit Omnia: An Andrew Valquist Adventure, Next Stop: Spanish, and In Saecula Saeculorum.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

De gustibus: Eating Crap in Romania...

The Romanian word for carp is, obviously linguistically related to English, crap.

When I was a young boy in Wisconsin, we used to go carp fishing all the time. It was great fun because carp can be huge! They put up an awesome fight. By Wisconsin law, you are forbidden to return a caught carp to the water, since they are non-indigenous to North America.

We caught carp, but we never would have thought of eating a carp.

But the Romanians love crap, as they call it.

I just took this picture at our local supermarket in Bucharest, Romania. This product is a mixture of crap eggs and sour cream and other things.

Romanians love to eat crap on bread.

They eat crap deep fried, roasted, breaded. They just love to eat crap.

I've never been able to get past the psychological block that we, back in Wisconsin, just never ate crap. And I'm not going to start eating crap here in Romania.

And so, de gustibus, Romanians. Enjoy your crap...

In Saecula Saeculorum, the 4th Novel in the Valquist Series

In this fourth novel of the Valquist Series, Andrew Valquist is retired (?) from the National Security Agency and teaching Latin at a Classical Academy in the Washington DC area. But in the world of espionage, looks can be deceiving. He's not necessarily happy with the role he has played in all this, but the school was actually a joint NSA/MI-6 Project in which four young people have been unwittingly prepared for a mission to travel back in time to ancient Rome to retrieve information from a library that may save the modern world from certain destruction. They know they have to at least try to save humanity, but can they also save each other?

Next Stop: Spanish, the 3rd Novel in the Valquist Series

This third novel in the Valquist Series can be read as an espionage action-adventure in its own right, but also you can use it as a way to either brush up on your Spanish or learn functional Spanish for the first time! John Valquist needs to learn Spanish. But he's in luck, since his uncle Andrew is a language expert and a former (?) spy who is taking him on a vacation to Spain so he can study the language. In Next Stop: Spanish, you have the chance to see and study the words John studies, and then watch him add more and more Spanish into his dialogue as the story progresses. During this vacation, they get pulled into espionage intrigue (why do these things always happen to the Valquist family?). In the dramatic conclusion, John will need to put together everything he has learned to save his uncle!

Amor Vincit Omnia: the 2nd Novel in the Valquist Series

In this second novel of the Valquist Series, Keith Massey takes you into the halls of the National Security Agency, where he himself worked for four years after 9/11 and an Arabic linguist. You follow our hero Andrew Valquist, as he starts work as a new recruit at the NSA. Little does he know that on his first on the job, he's about to fly off on an unexpected overseas assignment. He'll be even more surprised when he learns that his background in ancient Latin will be crucial to the mission!