DEEP SEA FISHING

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21986, 9 January 1937, Page 17

DEEP SEA FISHING

TO THB EDITOR Of THE PBB3S. Sir,—l am going to try to second your laudable attempt to put New Zealand on the tourist map, when you published that story about the mako shark fishing industry at Kaikoura. Fish stories should be backed up by photographs to substantiate them, though I have got none to back mine up. which I have gathered while I have been in Ward 2. lam only man I have ever heard pf whJ can say he has stroked the back of Pelorus Jack with his hand, gammy storyteller. “I was on board the little s.s. Waverlcy. She was loaded up to the gunwale when we were passing Jack’s domain off Clay Point, and he escorted us over his recognised beat as usual, rubbing the barnacles_off his back on the boat’s bottom. Yes, we were so loaded down that I was able to loan over the bow and scratch his back witli fny hand.” And he went on, “On another occasion, from a bigger boat, we saw him lying at ease on the water, and he declined to pay us a visit." It is a great pity that New Zealand lost this tourist asset, but we are told that Pelorus Jack gave us one of the biggest fish stories that ever was told — a pilot fish which used regularly to escort steamers through the waters of his domain at the mouth of the Pelorus Sound. As a tribute to the ghost of Pelorus Jack, it is fitting to keep his memory green and that his story should be retold occasionally. When photograph postcards of Jack were produced, they were treated with the same incredulity as a spook photograph is—with the one word —“fake.’ The laughs would become louder and longer when we asserted that Pelorus Jack was the ‘only fish that had an act of Parliament passed to protect him. It seems as if the monster of Loch Ness can take care of himself. “I got the fright of my life, which made my hair stand on end,” said my narrator, “when I looked into the eyes of a huge shark. Ugh! I can see ’em now. My mate and I were hauling in blue cod as fast as we could bait our hooks. We were in Nydia Bay. Pelorus Sound, fishing from a 12-foot flatty, with a sea anchor out, when a huge head, which seemed to be as big as our boat, reared up out of the water, and I saw those green as green eyes. Ugh! I was going to flail in with my paddle, when my mate signalled to me to keep quiet, and he cut the painter and we drifted away; he did not want to turn the big flsh of Nydia Bay into a man-eating shark.” — Yours, etc..* PETER TROLOVE. January 8, 1937.