We all know that there's no such thing as a dead certainty yet even the most circumspect among us are occasionally tempted by the thought: 'This time — just this once — it will be different. I'll get lucky.'
In Shepparton years ago, while dividing my time between school teaching and fishing in the Goulburn, I learned from my pedagogical colleague and fishing partner that a vast number of mature rainbow trout were to be released into the nearby Victoria Lake for the benefit of recreational fishermen.
Always interested in both the theory and practice of the piscatorial arts, my mate, Ken, getting wind of this plan, visited the distant trout farm and demonstrated rote-learned, earnest interest in fry, fingerlings and yearlings, not to mention allozyme variation in rainbow trout — or Oncorhynchus mykiss as he casually and uncomprehendingly referred to them once he had warmed to his spiel.
In this way Ken discovered a vital piece of information: the fish had been raised on a diet of chicken liver, among other sustaining nutrients.
On the afternoon of the official trout release, at a lakeside ceremony presided over by the Mayor and a battalion of dignitaries, Ken manoeuvred me into a quiet corner of the local pub and outlined his daring plan. We would take our dinghy to the lake just before dawn on the following morning and fish for trout — with chicken liver-baited hooks.
'It's a dead certainty,' he said. 'Practically all they've ever known is chicken liver. We'll fill the boat.'
'What if they're sick of chicken liver?'
He gave me a withering look, not bothering to reply to such catastrophic thinking. And so the die was cast and the fate of an incalculable number of the sexily named Oncorhynchus mykiss was sealed.
The next day the first streaks of a cold northern Victorian dawn found us, shadowy silhouettes, anchored in the middle of the lake, the 'compleat' anglers. Armed with crucial inside information we were more prepared than Isaac Walton could ever have imagined.
Five hours later, just before midday, we gave up, having had not one single bite, though trout were jumping and splashing all around us for the whole time, as if rejoicing in their newfound freedom and space.
That same afternoon, when the sun we had seen rise was contemplating giving it away for the day, 50 or so pelicans cruised in from various reaches and bends of the Goulburn, herded