the UPS and DOWNS OF A DAYS FISHING

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 24, 29 January 1945, Page 14

the UPS and DOWNS OF A DAYS FISHING

A KORERO Report

Several months ago several fishermen from the fleet at Island Bay, Wellington, put on their best suits, packed cases, and caught the express for Auckland. For weeks they were away from their homes. In Auckland they were paid £g a week, provided with meals and accommodation, and to the local fishermen they gave lessons in fishing. It wasn’t that the Auckland fishermen hadn’t been landing good catches, it wasn’t that they didn’t know their job ; but for certain types of fish, groper in particular, it was thought that if a change was made to methods used off Wellington results might be more successful and the market provided with a more plentiful supply. It is agreed the experiment was a success. Except for butterfish and crayfish, all the fishing on the Cook Strait banks is with lines ; with such deep water and a constant rip of current and tide the use of nets is not practicable. And that line fishing has become a highly developed art that can be employed only after sound training and years of practice. To those who weren’t qualified there would be risk to boat and to person, but no fish. The “ Wild Duck,” a forty-footer, and her crew of three men and a boy know all about the game. We spent a day with that boat and its crew. It wasn’t an enjoyable day— it was instructive. Sometimes the fishermen earn big money ; the day we spent in Cook Strait shows they

do not earn it either easily or pleasantly. Nor is their work without risk. The boy of the crew had a broken wrist. So the “ Wild Duck ” was short-handed. Crates of mackerel and a few precious boxes of sardines were on the deck for use as bait. Sharp meat-choppers sliced those fish into 2 in. chunks, the baiting of the lines began as soon as we left our moorings. On each line there are about ninety hooks, and that day we were using nine lines. The skipper, once we were past the breakwater and the threat of rocks, steadied the wheel with his back and helped his two mates with the work. We watched the baiting. And we wondered if that Cook Strait sea was going to be rough. The crew talked as they baited. In the paper that morning there was a report of a fishing-boat which had been thrown 20 ft. into the air when a whale came up for air beneath it. There had been a flip of a giant tail, a dinghy had been smashed, and the crew were lucky their boat hadn’t been wrecked. The men on the “ Wild Duck ” were sceptical. To them it didn’t seem possible that a launch could hit the water after a rise of 20 ft. without breaking its back. There were witnesses, the report continued, but it was too good to believe. Once off Island Bay two launches had been busily fishing when suddenly one of them lurched violently. A whale was gently rubbing its back against the side. It disappeared. The men sat down to have

a smoke, to recover from their amazement. Suddenly the other boat lurched as violently. One of the crew was thrown into the water. The two boats decided to get steaming. Later it was found the cause of the trouble was a calf whale ; its mother had been harpooned by one of the Picton chasers, and the little fellow (of about 30 ft.) was searching the seas for its parent. A flip of its tail, the crew reckoned, would have smashed the boats to smithereens. It took more than two hours to the spot in the Middle Straits Bank where we were to try our luck. But it’s more than luck. Small areas of water have been found to be the most consistently successful. Landmarks on both Islands give the positions ; when it’s foggy or visibility is poor the crews know they may as well stay at home. If the lines aren’t dropped in the exact spots there probably won’t be a fish caught. One hundred and twenty fathoms of line and 30 fathoms of hooks weighted with lead sink into the water. One of the crew has a long gaff to keep off the large gulls, which seem to think a baited hook will make a tasty morsel. . Attached to the end of the line is an inflated canvas buoy, as coloured and as large as a beach ball; it is to mark the position of the line which is left while the other lines are set. Groper was the fish we were hoping for. They are caught during October, November, December, June, and July. Ling, which is found in much deeper water3so fathom lines are used— the main catch during winter. The Cook Strait banks were found about eighteen years ago, and ever since they have been fished continually and successfully. So successfully, in fact, that often through the years the fishermen have not been able to market their hauls ; they have had to dump them. These days the position is the opposite : demand exceeds supply. In an hour all the lines had been cast, nine buoys were bobbing in the swell in a radius of about half a mile. It was noon and we were very hungry. But we had brought no lunch, so we would have nothing to eat until after our return about eight o’clock. I reckoned that by five o’clock I would be about starved to death.

I didn’t know that by five o’clock I would be nearly dead. But not from hunger. A wind light from the north. But was it so light ? It was blowing my hair, the deck was slipping, salt spray kept us in the shelter of the dinghy. Occasionally a wave snatched by the wind from the swell broke over the stem of the “ Wild Duck.” We shared a cheese sandwich given to us by one of the crew. Soon we would be hauling in the first line. I wished the wind would stop, that the deck would be still if only for a minute. _ A winch run from the engines is used to haul aboard the heavy weight of -line. It used to be done by hand ; it must have been tough work with anything up to 700 yards of line, and perhaps thirty or forty heavy fish. Dangerous work, too, especially in a wallowing sea when the boat could give a lurch to pull the line quickly through the men’s hands, the large sharp hooks with it. There have been some serious accidents.

Chugging and whining from the winch brought the line on board. Yards and yards of it, but still no hooks, no fish. Minutes passed. Nearly a quarter of an hour. At last something white dipped through the water : the first of the haul, the first that hadn’t got away. We strained our eyes. A beauty, 3 ft. and more. A groper. Hooks followed, the bait gone. Another fish. And another. Soon a pile. Fifteen were lying on the deck when the lead weight was aboard. Fifteen fish, eight varieties—groper, ling, bass, shark, conger eel, blind eel, barracouta, a large skate. By the time they had been hauled steadily through

fathoms of water and reached the deck they were dead, hardly a flip to their tails. We chugged forward, circling towards the next buoy, the second line. And then the same performance all over again. To haul in all the lines took hours. By four o’clock waves were breaking over the bow. We crouched in the doorway of the engineroom : the choice was between foul fumes from the engine or spray and waves over the deck. Suddenly I realized I didn’t feel hungry any more. I didn’t care whether I was wet. I had forgotten about the bite of the wind. I threw away a cigarette. If only the sky, the sea, the deck, the men would stop moving. If only for a minute. If only that pile of fish, those eyes, the blood from their cleaning would stop slithering. Something was upsetting me, something was troubling my systemor what used to be my system. Sea sickness. We jigged and joggled, slapped and banged through the seas. And dived. Then soared into the skies. This couldn’t go on. But it did. It went on for hours. By six o’clock I looked like one of those fish on the deck. By seven I knew how they felt. My hands, knuckles clenched, white, clutched the rail. On the deck the heap of fish grew bigger, still they slithered. A crate of fish heads glared uncaringly at me and my misery, heads kept to be used as bait for the crayfish pots. Beside them was a crate for the fish livers, another was brimful of groper throats. The scene was not calculated to help sea sickness. An offer of a cheese sandwich, the last, I refused. Never again

would I touch food. A moment later I gave up smoking for life. No more hotel bars. Never again. And while I was at it, horse racing, too. Round me the fishermen worked busily. They looked well enough, even cheerful. The swaying, heaving, slipping deck seemed to mean nothing to them. One of them lit his pipe. It was, I reckoned, sheer bravado. In sou-westers, oilskins, and seaboots they looked more like an advertisement for cod-liver oil than the crew of this thrusting, throbbing buckjumper of a launch. I considered they earned their money hard ; it would be better to be on relief than this ; one day was bad enough, but imagine every day in these straits. I imagined, clutched the rail again. By seven o’clock I had reached the conclusion that all fishermen, including Izaak Walton, Tom Sawyer, Zane Grey, and the crew of the “ Wild Duck,” were far from normal human beings. I doubted whether they were either normal or human. The trip back was spent untangling the hooks, coiling the lines, cleaning the fish. Two hundred groper, dozens of ling and bass ; the sharks and other fish were thrown back minus heads and livers (livers these days provide a profitable sideline : the “ Wild Duck ” the previous month had sold /40 worth to a factory at Island Bay which processes fish-oil products). Slowly we chugged to the shelter of the coast. The sea was quieter now. Huge gulls heavy from a day’s fishing, sleepy from fighting each other for titbits, rested on the water : the crew called them albatrosses, and certainly they were large enough. Heavy birds they were, four or five times the size of the commom seagull ; their heads were without life or expression, giving the impression of strange wood carvings. Curious specimens. Some of them resembled Donald Duck so closely as to be a certain breach of Hollywood copyright.

Thirty minutes away from our moorings we passed the approximate spot where several years before a fishing-boat running for shelter from a southerly gale had broken down. Hoping quickly to adjust the fault in their engines they refused a line from another launch which carried on to- port. The rest of the story is not known : a little wreckage was found, but the four men of the crew were never heard of again. It’s not the only fishing-boat tragedy there has been in the Island Bay fleet. And most of the trouble is caused by that wind from the south which can whip a calm day and a flat sea to fury in less than two hours. The fishermen are always watchful, but two hours isn’t long to gather in the equipment and reach

shelter. Sometimes it hasn’t been long enough. The day had been profitable (at least to the fishermen). A good groper catch, the liver boxes full, plenty of bait for the crayfish pots. And also a crate of groper

throats, the tastiest, tenderest, most sought after pieces of fish in the sea. You never see them in the shops : according to the crew the reason is if the fishmonger is courting he gives these titbits to his sweetheart ; if he’s married he eats them himself.

Island Bay twinkled round the coast. Past the heavy hanging rocks, the sea threshing against them, we chugged into the boat harbour, picked up our moorings. Thankfully I stepped from the dinghy to dry, safe land. It was where I intended to stay : the “ Wild Duck’s ” crew, on the other hand, working on the theory that there are more fish in the sea than ever came out of it, would be away again with the dawn. I wished them luck. “ Here’s a groper for you — that’ll make you happy,” said the skipper. I tucked the parcel under my arm. But it wasn’t that that made me happy. It was Mother Earth. I felt for a cigarette. I wondered if it was too late for a beer.