TE ARA MOANA

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 60, 12 March 1938, Page 7 (Supplement)

TE ARA MOANA

THE PATHS OF THE SEA

THE fisherman, with the patience and skill of all Maori craftsmen, slowly fashioned a gleaming hook. Except for the bone point he had gathered the materials on the seashore where he lived and worked; his tools, too, were made from stones he had found nearby, for this particular hook was made many years ago, before the pakeha brought his metal implements. He was making a pa kahawai, a line to be used without bait for fishing the seething shoals of kahawai that he coukl watch rippling across thj bay, a cloud of shrieking bird* hovering and dipping above them. Kahawai coukl l>e taken in numbers and were a favourite food.

By. . . . Olwyn Rutherford

Perhaps many of you go fishing and know the thrilling sport of tioiling—to ing on a long line behind your 1 ~>at a shining lure that leaps and twists like one of the small fish on which the kahawai are feeding. This kind of hook is known as a "spinner." and acts as hook and bait in one. The <rr;.r vou use e'most exactly resembles that which the Maori made and use 1, but the barbed . is n.ade of iron and a strip of metal or bright paint usually takes the place of the paua. Probablv it came from a shop, whereas this Maori hook \v..s lovingly shaped by the fis! Lan for his own use. Paua shell, the rainbow colours of which ?lr. m at you from the eyes of carved fares, was used also for hookmaking, and the fisherman had been very careful in choosing a suitable shell with clear, bright colours. Taking his stone ras. he cut a strip about 4in long from the side of the shell and neatly filed the edpres. He gave much care to the shaping of the ends, one of which he notched, as the drawing shows, so that later the lashings would be firm. Now the fisherman found a piece of hard wood, perhaps manuka or pohutukawa. and beiran to carve it to fit the back of the strip of shell.

| The back wn- rounded and smoothly curved and in the front was made a fl..t bed. in which the paua would be set. He had to give great care to tliis part of the work, trying the lining against the wooden shank ! from time to time to see if it fitted, smoothing off a little here and there, watching the line of it critically. The tvi-ted curve of the shell was difficult to match, but upon it depended the success of the finished hook, so the craftsman's fingers were very patient. He was sati-fird when the carving was so smoothly finished that the two | icces fitted tightly together without the use of any kind of p-im. The two parts of the shank were ready. Tho time had come to shape the point and the fisherman had been saving a piece of bo- for just such a use as this. Tt was from the leg of an enemy killed in war and there wa6 no better way to insult the memory of the dead than by making fi = h hooks from their bones. "Besides." said the victor, "such bone would make a stout, smooth point." From the leg bone, then, this fisherman cut a curving point and the base of it he notched so that it could be lashed firmly to the shank. The three parts being ready he set them all together and bound them strongly with scraped flax fibre. In these lashings, at one end was caught a bunch of gay feathers from the little blue penguin, or longer brown kiwi feathers. This "hackle," as it is called, partly hid the point and increased the fishlike appearance of the lure as it spun and flashed through the water. Attached to a long line of hand-twisted flax fibre the pa kahawai was ready for use. "Lone Hander" tells us that the fisherman used a hook with a different coloured inlay to suit the day. for the colours of the paua varied, and the man owned several treasured hooks from which to choose. A day of kahawai fishinjr was an exciting event. The m«n went out. dragging three or four spinners on long lines l>ehind each fishing canoe. The paddlers were urged on to greater spurts of speed by shouts

and songs as the canoes dashed through the water that was broken by the shoals of fish. In the wake <>f each canoe flashed the little fishlike rtpinu.-r* with their hidden points. Any kahawai which were unfortunate enough to rush at them, mistaking them for real fi?h. were hauled on board and the spinner was cast overboard again.

As "the laden canoes returned the excited women came down to the beach to greet them and help to clean the catch and carry it home. Such quantities of fish were taken that the ones which could not be eaten at (he time were cooked and dried for use later on. The fisherman is dead who made and used this hook, but his people in some parts of Xew Zealand still make the p<i. kahawai with much of their old skill, using iron in place of bone for the point. They are still keen fishermen, their cunning in taking the finny children of Tangaroa with net and line providing them with much of their food. Throughout the waters of the Pacific these trolling hooks are used in different forms, and the material for making them varies. The native fishermen of the Melanesian Island® carve them delicately from pearl -hell or from white clam in the form of a little fish. The point they often make from turtle shell, heated and bent into shape. In Polynesia, too. the cousins of the Maori are cunning fishermen who use hooks very similar to the Maori ones. except that they are not backed with wood and the materials are different. The people of all these places have, like the Maori, adapted to their needs the materials wiili which Xature provided theui.

A FISHERMAN MAKES A TROLLING HOOK