American Angler in Australia (1937)

by Grey, Zane

  And I'd hardly uttered the words when there he was shooting like a huge purple bird for my bait. I let go my line even before he reached it, and then as the reel whizzed I pressed my gloved hand down to prevent an overrun. You handle every strike of a Marlin differently. In this case I did what would be right in most cases. When he felt the hook he came out, a long, lean fish of some three hundred pounds, and he threw that bait thirty feet. From the feel of the action I judged the hook had caught on his long jaw and did not penetrate. I have caught Marlin, though, with only the point of the hook in the bone, not in to the barb. Peter gave vent to some thoroughly American language, which he had learned from me and which would not look so well in print.

  "Only an incident of the day, Pete, old top," I said. "Put on another bait."

  "But it's the first day, sir," he expostulated. Peter and my other men wanted me to make the first catch for 1936.

  We ran on. I trolled that bait clean to Montague Island.

  There were birds to the eastward, and I gave that stretch a going over.

  Six of them were albatross. This was my very first time to fish right with these falcons of the sea, and I watched them till they sailed away.

  Next day there were three other boats already at Montague. One of these passed us and kindly threw us a yellowtail bait, but it fell short into the water. Off the north end of the island, after some time trolling, we managed to catch a few bait. And we were scarcely two hundred feet from the rocks when we put these smaller fish on and started to troll.

  We had not passed the corner of the island when I saw a blue flash and a ragged fin coming from the left. It was a Marlin and he took my bait with a rush. At the same time I saw a sharp bill back of Gus's hook. I shouted: "Look out! There's another!" This one got Gus's bait and he pulled it off for the simple reason that Gus was so scared or excited that he held on to the line with grim tenacity. I made a remark. Gus said: "Was that your fish?"

  "No, it wasn't," I replied. "The idea is when you have a fish rush your bait to let him have it."

  "Where's your--fish?" gasped Gus.

  "He doesn't want to stop going places, so I'll have to stop him."

  I hooked the Marlin, and he leaped splendidly, fully six hundred feet away and close to the camera boat. The surprised crew and picture men, who didn't know what was happening, nearly fell overboard. But they soon got busy. Bowen appeared to be frantic because the Warrens were reluctant to run their boat at the fish. They were right, of course. A second boat has no business near another one in which an angler has hooked a fish.

  But Bowen's idea was to shoot motion pictures. He did not care if they did risk cutting my line.

  What with the jumping antics of the Marlin and the attempts of the Tin Hare to get on top of it we had lots of fun for a little while. I made rather short work of that Marlin, because I discovered I, too, wanted the credit of the first one for 1936. We soon had him on board. Peter beamed and congratulated me. He also waved the Marlin flag at the other boat.

  Baiting up again, we ran out. Gus had photographed some of the leaps of this fish, and he was happy, too. Presently I saw a Marlin slide out and shake himself, perhaps half a mile out. I pointed. Peter said he had seen the splash. He did not need to be told to hook the Avalon up and speed in the direction I had pointed.

  "Shut her off, Peter," I called, and stood up. "Work around here."

  Presently I saw the purple form of a Marlin looming up, and my old familiar cry pealed out, "There he is!" I have probably called that out thousands of times.

  This fish came directly to the bait. But he did not take it at once, as I expected. He weaved to and fro. He rushed it, came up alongside it, struck at it. "Son of a gun is leary," I said.

  "He'll take it," replied Peter, and sure enough he did. But he let it go.

  And though he came back, time and again, he would not strike. No doubt he thought there was something wrong about that bait and he was not hungry enough to be unwary. When Marlin are hungry they will strike; when they are ravenous they will stick their heads out of the water back of the boat to take a bait.

  In the next three hours I raised several more Marlin off the point of the island, but they had evidently fed and would not take. The other boat raised one, and then Bowen was too slow in pulling his bait away from a hammerhead. It got the bait and the hook. Evidently this made Bowen angry, for he began to jerk and haul strenuously. His drag was too strong. I feared the shark would pull him overboard. The rod wagged to and fro, and then suddenly, when the shark pulled free of the hook, Bowen went over backwards, clean out of the chair.

  Soon after that I sunk my bait to a gray shadow, and soon was fast to some kind of a shark. I worked hard on it, for practice more than anything else, and soon had it up.

  "Darned old rearimi!" ejaculated Peter. But Pat, the market fisherman on our boat, said it was a gray pointer. Anyway, Peter gaffed it, and the two of them held the shark for a splashing melee while the camera boat stood by. I heard Bowen yell through his megaphone, "Roll 'em along!"

  And in Hollywood parlance that meant to start the electric motors on the motion-picture cameras.

  After that fun we caught another bait. I noticed that the sea was rising outside and I thought we had better start back to Bermagui. Still I lingered to try for some more. Presently Gus hooked a good-sized bonito.

  We were close to the rocks where the herd of sea lions held forth. Half a dozen big bulls dived off and made for the fish. I jerked the rod out of Gus's hand. But hard as I pumped and wound I could not get that bonito away from them.

  Then the camera crew went wild. It had not occurred to me till then just what an unusual picture that action would make. But with seals fighting over my bait, leaping out, darting to and fro, I soon realized the fact.

  So instead of trying to get my bait in I left it out there and jerked it this way and that to excite the seals further. This worked. The sea lions made such a commotion that others piled off the rocks until the sea appeared alive with graceful brown forms on the surface and under.

  Then what I might have suspected actually happened. I hooked a big bull sea lion in the chin, and he did not like that at all. In fact he made a vociferous and violent protest. He stood half his massive body high out of the water and tussled like a huge dog. He jerked his head from side to side, while the bait dangled about for the other sea lions to snatch it.

  Here I was hooked to a six-hundred-pound sea lion, on a bait tackle! I did not want to kill the beast or leave the hook, leader, and part of the line hanging from his jaw. We had to follow the beast to keep him from running off more line. I was in a quandary. Peter was wrathful. "Haul the plugger up here. I'll gaff him!"

  "Haul him up? Ha! Ha! I see myself. He's as strong as an elephant." But Bowen and his crew had a different point of view. Theirs was a picture angle. And they made the best of it. Finally I told Peter to run close to the sea lion and try to cut the leader. I held the brute as hard as I could, with a feeling something was going to break. Peter managed, however, to get hold of the wire, and then the hook pulled out, to the chagrin of our camera men.

  It occurred to me then that the incident had been unique and remarkable.

  I have hooked many denizens of the deep, like dolphin, rays, devilfish, sawfish, octopus, and now finally a big sea lion.

  "Pete, what do you know about that?" I exclaimed. "Something new!"

  "Right-o, sir. I've a hunch we might hook anything in these unfished waters."

  That was a thrilling thought and I heartily accepted it.

  Chapter III

  At midnight the wind in the tree tops awakened me. It had a low, menacing sound. I got up and went out on the bluff, and I was more than rewarded.

  Beneath me the great rollers crashed to ruin on the rocks, with incessant changing roar. A half-moon, low down, cast a pale light upon the sea.

  Overhead Orion appeared as always, sloping to the west. And the Southern Cross, that magnificent and compelling constella
tion, blazed with white fire, high in the heavens. Far out to sea there were gloom and mystery.

  At once I grasped a difference between this scene and any other I had come upon. I sensed a far country, a country surrounded by a vast ocean, with something hanging over it that must have been the influence of the Antarctic. Yet despite the brooding mood, the aloofness, almost a forbidding dark brightness, like the light which comes sometimes before a storm breaks at sunset, the scene was beautiful and unforgettable. And I fell under its spell.

  At five the next morning there was a sunrise remarkable in the extreme.

  A dark mass of cloud overhung the east. Beneath it a broad band of clear sky turned gradually gold, until the blazing disc of the sun tipped the horizon line, and then there came a transfiguration of sea, sky, and cloud. For a few moments there was a glorious light too dazzling for the gaze of man. One thing a fisherman sees far more than his fellow men, and that is the coming of the dawn and the breaking of the light, and the bursting of the sun into its supremacy.

  Here at Bermagui the early morning never fails to reward the appreciative watcher. The birds at the first gray change from the darkness--the kookaburras first, with their strange, incorrigible, humorous laughter, wild, startling, concatenated; then the other birds, the gulls walking with dignity right into camp, and the wrens and robins and magpies. I miss the bell birds and the tuis of New Zealand, than which no other birds of far countries have more intrigued me.

  After several days of wind and rain and stormy sea there came a spell of fine weather. It was as welcome as May flowers. It gave me a chance to run out to sea, to fish hard every day, to get my bearings on this foreign shore.

  I caught six Marlin swordfish between 250 and 300 pounds in weight, and raised or sighted about thirty. This during a period of a week and a half, with only one windy day, was a very agreeable surprise, and augured well for big results later. The crew of the Tin Horn accounted for three fish, two hammerheads, and one mako. Sight of this latter shark satisfactorily identified this species in Australian waters.

  I lost two really fine fish, the larger of which was a mako of about 600 pounds. I had no idea that the strike came from a mako until I hooked him. Then he ran and leaped. One flashing sight of a great white-and-blue, huge-finned fish high in the air was enough to make Peter and me yell wildly in unison. We rejoiced to see one of our old shark friends, or enemies, at the end of my line. He fell back with a crash and sent a great splash skyward. Then to further convince us of his kinship with the makos he swam up to the boat, to see what it was all about. His coal-black eye, staring and cruel, his pointed nose, his savage underhung jaw, partly open to disclose great curved fangs, his round body, potent with tremendous power, his utter lack of fear of man or boat--these identified him as the mako-mako, first named by Polynesians in the South Seas, and in New Zealand by the Maoris. The Australian name for this species is bluepointer. I have no doubt but that this provincial name will give way to the better and correct "mako."

  I was holding him hard and Peter was speculating whether or not to attempt to gaff him, when he cut my leader off as neatly as if he had used steel shears.

  The wire sang as it flipped back to us. A Marlin leader is really not good to use on mako, though I have caught many on it. I prefer specially-made leaders of heavy wire and big hooks for this powerful and savage-biting shark.

  The other fish I lost was a striped Marlin that would have weighed more than four hundred pounds. But I never caught him to find out. While trolling I always wear gloves. In hooking fish and fighting them I find gloves indispensable. But they get hot at times and uncomfortable. This day I removed them for a moment--and then, of course, it happened. A big purple-banded Marlin shot up as swiftly as a meteor. He took the bait and was off. I had to press both my ungloved hands down on the whizzing reel of line to prevent an overrun and backlash. I burned my hands. But I could not let go to set the drag. The fish leaped into the air, a beautiful bronze-and-silver Marlin, barred with broad blue bands, one of the largest of his kind; and with a swing of his savage head he flung bait and hook back at us. That was a disappointment, of course, but as I had a fish on the stern I managed to survive the loss.

  Bait we found difficult to procure. The yellowtail and bonito around Montague Island had a most unobliging habit of biting not more than about once a week. The native boatmen on the Tin Horn promised to catch salmon for us, but up to the date of this writing they did not do so. I found myself longing for the huge schools of trevalli and kahawai that make fishing in New Zealand such a joy. The fishing along this Australian coast is too new and strange and, uncertain for me to make any predictions as yet.

  My first really big fish I raised opposite the lighthouse on Montague, not very far out. He struck at the bait, missed it, and left a frothy boil on the water. Then he came back at it, a dark shape, incredibly swift, and actually took it without showing his spear. He was off as fast as the big Marlin I lost. When I hooked him I came up solid on a heavy fish. The sensation was most agreeable, although the jerk shifted me off my chair and almost cracked my neck.

  We signaled the camera-boat to speed up. My line was reeling off and beginning to surface. Peter yelled that he was coming up. This moment of expectation is always thrilling. He broke water, showing a short black bill, a big head and deep body, shining like a black opal.

  "Black Marlin!" I whooped, and Peter echoed me.

  After a moment I warned Peter to steady up and keep away from him, and to wave back the keen camera men, who would have run right on top of the fish. Then I "put the wood on him," as the American angling saying goes.

  We got within two hundred feet, and signaled the camera-boat to come along behind and somewhat out to the right. In that position we ran along with the black Marlin--because I could not stop him at that stage--until I saw the line rising to the surface, indication that he was about to jump.

  I was all excitement, yet tense with caution and strong physical exertion. He was hard to hold. His blunt bill appeared splitting the surface, and then his head, his broad shoulders, his purple back, and all of him wagged up and out, until he cleared the water by several feet. His back was toward me, but it was easy to estimate his size and I let out a second whoop. I heard the crew of the Tin Horn screaming like lunatics.

  They had never seen a fish approaching the size and beauty of this one.

  He plunged back with a thundering smash. Then, as I expected, he came out again, faster, this time broadside, and indeed a wonderful picture for an angler to gloat over.

  "Oh, gosh!" I groaned. "If the camera boys only get that one in their little black box!"

  His third leap was still faster, and more of a spectacle, as he went low and long, all of him up, with his wide tail waving. This time he dived back and sounded. He went deep and stayed down.

  I fought him an hour or more before I could hold him even a little.

  Following that, he rose again to the surface, to repeat his trio of leaps, and after that he woke up and tore the sea to shreds. He made his most magnificent leap, which I could not see, in front of the boat. Gus was up there on the boat, and when he came back to the cockpit he was beside himself with triumph and ecstasy.

  "Holy Mackali! what a fish! I had him in the finder every jump."

  When the black Marlin soused back the last time I had a feeling we would see no more of him until I brought him up to gaff. I was right, and this time did not arrive for over and hour. We were extremely careful at this most hazardous moment, and as luck would have it Peter soon had a rope round the Marlin's tail. And I knew I had the record swordfish for Australia.

  We steamed back to Bermagui and the men carried the black Marlin ashore.

  Lying on the green grass, the fish looked grand. He was indeed a black opal hue. When I named this species some ten years ago I should have used the word opal and have called it black opal Marlin. That would have been especially felicitous for Australia. He was a short fish, broad and deep and round, and
I estimated his weight as five hundred pounds. But I missed it. The scales we procured at a Bermagui store were inadequate, weighing only in periods of ten. Peter called out: "Four hundred eighty.

  Let it go at that."

  "Not on your life, Pete," I protested. "Don't you see the scale point wavers beyond 480. He weighs something beyond 480." And I stuck to that--some unknown pounds beyond 480.

  There was a big crowd of spectators to see that weighing of Bermagui's biggest swordfish so far, and it reminded me of the times at Avalon, when thousands of people would flock out to see a broadbill I had brought in.

  Next day the ocean around Montague Island was empty for me. My boat could not raise a fish of any kind. But other boats had better luck. I saw one flag flying and another boat manifestly fighting a fish.

  About three o'clock we started the long run back to Bermagui. The sea had whipped up a little, and it promised to get rough. The Tin Horn had a lead of a couple of miles on us. We got about that distance from the island and had caught up somewhat with my camera-boat when I saw that some one had hooked a fish. We ran ahead full speed, and soon drew within range to see what was going on.

  Bowen had the rod and it was evident that whatever was on the rod had Bowen. He was sturdy and strong, the same as Emil, but he had never caught a swordfish, and to catch a big one off that boat, with the Warrens running it, would be little short of a miracle. The fish came up to surf-board along the waves, making the water fly in sheets. I had a poor glimpse of it. But Peter said, "Black Marlin, and a good fish, too!"

  The next hour and more was harder on me that on Ed Bowen, I was sure. But I hung around, camera in hand, hoping the fish would broach. However, he did not come up; he worked out to sea. Strenuously as Ed pumped and wound, he got line in only when the boatman ran up on the fish. They ran in circles. They halted when the fish was running and went on when he was momentarily stopped. From the way Ed's rod wagged, I judged the fish to be pretty heavy. Peter said not so big. He grew tired of circling their boat endlessly and wanted to turn back for Bermagui. I stayed as long as I could stand it. I wanted to tell Ed and those boatmen what to do. But if I had told them, and then they lost the fish, they would have blamed me--a terrible thing, as I knew to my cost. Finally I took up a megaphone and called Ed, "Hey there--that fish is as tired as he'll ever get."