Watching 58-year-old fishing fanatic Charlie Diedo haul in multiple carp from Lake Burley Griffin puts the much maligned fish and embattled waterway in a new light.
Although he left his homeland as a five year-old, Mr Diedo puts his love of fishing and water down to his Maltese heritage. He says as a British colony, and the most fought over island in the Mediterranean, Malta supplied water at crucial times during battles.
Lake Burley Griffin was trout heaven when a young Charlie Diedo arrived with his father Anthony and grandfather Joe.
"You see that little white bridge over there," he says, pointing to a stormwater drain running from Bowen Park, Kingston, into the lake. "I have seen trout trying to get up there to spawn."
When carp arrived, driving out other fish, he learned to live with and appreciate them. He once supplied fresh carp to friends who turned them into tasty meals, but says these people are too shy to own up to eating them.
Mr Diedo says people who catch the lake's carp often abuse them, either bashing them about, or leaving them on the bank to rot and stink.
"If you don't want to kill it, put it back in the water," he says, while fishing on the lake's edge.
He casts his line and burley cage loaded with bread and corn into the water from a sandy, pebbly foreshore near the Boathouse Restaurant. Soon after he scoops up a plump carp.
He pulls the fish in tight against his chest to keep it steady. His thumb slides under its gills and he picks a small, wide-gapped hook from the carp's rubber-ring like lip in a matter of seconds. The next moment there's a flash of silver in the water as the freed carp scurries into the depths.
This is repeated many times as more fish are drawn into the burley patch, until Mr Diedo's blue shirt is wet, and covered in sand, scale slime and traces of blood from extracting hooks.
Angler Barry Manclark joins Mr Diedo and unpacks two rods. He says as a fighting fish few freshwater species are equal to carp, including trout. "Big carp leave them for dead," he says.
"Mud marlin," says fishing commentator Bryan Pratt, who joins the other two. Mr Pratt says anglers often give their bigger carp to pelicans, and compete to see which pelican can down the biggest fish in a single gulp.
Mr Diedo says the carp are ideal for children learning to fish because they are almost guaranteed of success.
"Most people use a sinker and two bits of corn. No, you've got to feed these babies," he says, squeezing a fistful of breadcrumbs and corn into a fresh ball of burley.
