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Story 2009 Where is Waldo

Page history last edited by Jerome Moisand 14 years, 12 months ago

 

Where is Waldo? A video star is born!

 

When

Feb 16th and 21st, 2009

Where

Boston, MA

Who

Fishing with my Aquavu camera!

See also

Some pics in Picasa album

 


The story

 

Early February, the Charles river starts to thaw, this is my usual time to record a few underwater videos. On Feb 13th, I was quite lucky, recorded pretty good material, and edited & published on YouTube the "Carp Live! Long Hair" video which was very well received.
 
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No wonder I was back a few days later, ready to record more. Trouble was my fishing spot was partly covered by a thin layer of ice. I succeeded to break enough of it to drop bait & camera, and there was enough room to maneuver a fish through open water to land it.
 
I started to chum the swim, and switched on the recording just for fun. After 15 minutes, I assumed that carp were turned on enough, I stopped the recording, assembled a rig to test and started a second recording. Yeah well, except that I didn't properly reload the camera's battery the evening before, and it didn't last long. I was quite disappointed, this was a nice day, the water was pretty clear, I would have had nice material if only I could have recorded my experiments. So I started to fish a bit just for sheer enjoyment, quickly joined by a nice old guy who often comes here to fish for bass and crappie. This turned out to be a nice day, I stayed a while, then went home.
 
This could have been the end of the story, but I was curious to watch my two recordings. I started to watch the first one, carp were eating very actively, this was cool to watch. Suddenly after 100 seconds or so, I got a glimpse of an unusual fish. Could it be? A linear? So I kept watching the rest of the 15 minutes of recording (which was quite nice, actually) and I did spot the same fish a few more times, and this was a linear for sure. Now that's cool. So I posted my video (cunningly dubbed "Where is Waldo?") on Google Video and on the CAG forum, to share with the community. 

 

 

Here are a few snapshot frames of Waldo happily swimming with its friends.

 

 

Master Iain (aka Redcoat) saw the video and surprised me by posting a picture of a linear, caught at the very same spot and the fish did look quite similar!

  
 
This was starting to remind me of Scott and the "bumblebee" koi (I locate a very unusual fish, and Scott -or Iain- lands it instead of me! Not fair! Click here for the entire story). So we started to joke about who is the most "evil", Rick couldn't agree more, and my witty wife decided that we were all part of the "Evil Genius Squad" - in reference to a book she just read. And look what she assembled... The "Whatever you do don't get caught" mantra was especially prescient. Let's just hope that the author will not mind the slight violation of copyright and will not use her super-power (check her last name) against our fishing!
  
 
It turned out that Iain was especially evil because this pic was dated from 2005, and I had taken it myself (and completly forgot about it since then!). No way this could be the same fish, which looked quite small on the video. I was wondering how to give him some payback...
 
The following week-end, I was back at the same spot and happily recording a new video. No, I didn't see Waldo on video. I spent a couple of hours landed fish and accumulating raw video material. Finally, my recording device indicated that the memory card was full. At the same time, I glanced at the camera display and just had a glimpse of a fish grabbing my rig. So I started to play the fish and when it got close to shore, I opened the biggest eyes you can think of. THIS WAS WALDO! And here is the small beauty. 

 

 
I had some troubles to get a decent pic, a passerby took two pretty bad ones, so I had to fumble around with my self-timer and do it again. In-between, I put Waldo back in the water for a minute, and the fish probably liked it but my hands did not. Freezing cold! Which explains the strange grin on the pics... You can compare those pics with the underwater snapshots, and no doubt is possible, this is the same fish!
 
 
Now it was time for payback, so I posted my pics on the forum, dedicating the catch to Master Iain. Who tried to claim that the fish he caught in 2005 was the original Waldo, and I had caught a descendant, but nobody believed him. As it should be. ;-)

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