Fish tows two boats for 2hr

Press, 27 August 1980, Page 1

Fish tows two boats for 2hr

PA Dunedin Two Port Chalmers trawler skippers have a grand yam to top the ordinary fisherman’s boast about the one that got away. Mr Peter Munro, of the Port Chalmers Co-oper-ative, said yesterday that two Port Chalmers fishing boats had been “towed" by whatever was caught in the net of one of them, before it made good its escape off Dunedin after a two-hour battle. Mr Munro said a Port Chalmers fisherman, Mr Alan Hughes, was trawling about 2km off Wickliffe Bay when he apparently caught a big fish, probably a whale shark. The fish towed Mr Hughes’s trawler, the Caroline, backwards at about four knots, so assistance was called.

Another Port Chalmers vessel, the 16m Doraid, passed a line to the Caroline in an effort to tow it, but found it too was being dragged backwards, Mr Munro said. ■

It was only when the engine was revved to about 12,000 r.p.m. that it was able to “master" the fish, he said. After two hours of alternately being towed and towing the fish, the two vessels reached shallow water where an attempt was made to raise the now apparently subdued fish. Mr Munro said that when the net was lifted, the fish had disappeared. There were no holes in the nets.

He said the fish “must have been an enormous and dangerous thing to be able to pull two trawlers backwards.”