More Cheats and Fishing

A little while ago I did an article on Cheats and Fishing, which outlined the lengths some fishermen will go, to get themselves in the record books, or a trophy for the wall.

There is another form of cheating, lets call it photo-cheating. We all know about holding a fish away from the body, and closer to the camera so the fish looks bigger. But a quick glance at the size of the hands holding the fish, versus the size of the head controlling the arms and hands manipulating the fish, expose this harmless enough nonsense.

Well I thought I had heard just about all the tricks known to man to fool a camera, and the people viewing the photo. Of course I had not. I was talking to a guide from Taupo the other night and he came up with a photo-cheat that is as remarkable in the simplicity of it’s execution, as it is in it’s complexity of planning.

My guide friend put the client on a nice fish, he caught it, beached it in the shallow water, and then took off his pack and pulled out a tiny rod butt section complete with small reel, laid it down beside the fish, and took the photo.

The guide was gob-smacked, “where did you get that rod butt?”
“Had it made “, said the client with no hint of embarrassment.

So this is where the maths comes in. A rough guide to the length of a hand-grip from base of the rod to the top of the hand-grip is around 25cm (10″) on 5 and 6 weight rods. The clients rod hand-grip was only around 15cm (6″) long, or 60% of the length of a normal rod.

So when the client laid his rod down beside it the fish looked 40% bigger than it would compared to a normal rod. A 45cm (18″) fish suddenly looks like 63cm (25″).

As those of you who have a smattering of maths, despite educators unwillingness to teach it, will realise this bit of photo-foolery will only work on small fish. A fish over 22″ would become 31” – even our cheating friend might blanch at that – but maybe not.