Fishing for tiger fish

So, I went fishing on the Lower Zambezi River with a bunch of Brits this weekend. Here's the chateau we stayed in. It didn't have A/C, but as you can see is pretty nice.

Here's the crew (sans Rebecca, who was using the ladies room) and this picnic table is where we did all of our meals. It was greatness, as one of the ladies had organized for all or our meals. To my chagrin, I did confirm that they all wished there was a container of Marmite there to spread on their toast, but fortunately that bane of humanity was left at home for this trip.







Here I am with our guide Stewart. Of the seven people in my party, I was one of two who had ever cast a rod, so there were some tutorials given on the boat. Hence, when ever I flicked a line out into the water, my cast was met with "oooo's" and "ahhhhhh's". That was good for my self-esteem, but not good for my ultimate fish count, as two of the new comers landed our two tiger fish.





Here was the first tiger fish we caught, it was about 6lbs, so pretty small, but we were excited to pull on in. As you can see, the teeth are quite gruesome.

This is about an 8lb tiger fish, which is about small-to-medium size. This guy said that he never thought he'd have his picture taken with a fish, but that he now understood the reason people enjoyed fishing.









Here are a couple of local villagers in a homemade boat cut from a single tree trunk.

Here are a pack of hippos just doing their thing in the water. Apparently there is one male and all the others are females.  These hippos are actually standing on ground, and would stay slightly submerged (as in the pic) for multiple hours. I guess when you're super fat and don't have webbed feet, then any buoyancy you can add is beneficial.

Here is a pic of a Baobab tree with a village hut behind it. Baobab trees are the iconic African trees that have the enormous trunk.

Here was a very unexpected and welcomed treat we found along the banks of the river. We ran across a pack of African Wild Dogs, which is an endangered species, with only about 5,000 in existence. The fact that we weren't in a national park, makes this all the more unique. We were able to sit in the boat and watch the pack for about 10 minutes.