American Angler in Australia (1937)

by Grey, Zane

  "Tired?--Good Lord!--I'm the tired one!" panted Ed. "What'll I do?"

  "Stop the boat and fight him."

  "Hell! He won't stop--neither will these boatmen."

  "Try it once."

  They made a valiant effort. Ed heaved and wound mightily. He yelled at me, "Notify Australian Government--I'm pulling up--another island for them!"

  "Aw, you're not pulling anything. That fish doesn't know he's hooked."

  "Go AWAY!" bawled Ed. "Wanna make me--lose him?"

  Peter interposed with an encouraging shout: "You'll get him. Take it slower. Just keep a good strain on him. You'll get him."

  "That's telling me," Ed yelled back, gratefully.

  We left them to their fate and ran back to Bermagui, arriving about five o'clock.

  Just before dark the Tin Horn steamed in, proudly flying a flag. They had their fish. It was a good one, as Pete had said, and weighed four hundred pounds. I congratulated Ed on a really remarkable feat. He beamed. "My back's broke. Three hours! I never worked so hard in all my life."

  And then he burst into a marvelous narrative of what had happened on board the Tin Horn. It differed vastly from the story the boatmen told.

  Emil, who is a temperamental artist, had still a weirder story to tell.

  But for me each and every word was significant with proof of the humor, the sport, the thrill, the misery and ecstasy of big-game fishing.

  Chapter IV

  Tackle and method in angling are things very important to fishermen.

  And they cause more argument, controversies, and, alas! more ill-will than anything in the big-game fishing, unless it is the competition and rivalry that seem unfortunately inseparable from the sport.

  There was a time when I used to tell anglers what I believed to be the proper and best way to fish. I never do that any more, unless directly asked by some sincere amateur. But all fishermen are interested in what the others use, and here in Australia I find myself vastly intrigued and confounded by the "gear" these fishermen have and the way they use it. To give them just credit, I am bound to admit that they have done remarkably well with wrong measures.

  I have not seen any angler using the drifting method of fishing in Australian waters. This is the one mostly used in New Zealand. It remains to be seen how good or bad it will be here. Here they troll from early till late, and in our American fishing parlance, they run the wheels off the boat. I admit that and will say that these gentlemen have started right.

  There is no limit to these fishing-waters. Swordfish are here, there, and everywhere. In deep waters I do not believe they can be located daily at any given point out at sea. Around the islands and near shore they can be depended on to come in every few days. So far during my six weeks' fishing here I find the Marlin ravenously hungry. This makes a vast difference. Anybody can hook a hungry fish. Which explains the incredible success some methods attain. It can be explained by realizing that a hungry swordfish could be hooked with a flatiron or cricket bat. Catching it, and repeating, of course, are a different matter.

  Fishing at Bermagui, Narooma and Eden, on this South Coast, is only three years old. The first method, and one still in use here, was to troll with a heavy lead on the line. It was attached to the leader by a ring from which a string stretched up to the boat. In the event of a strike the lead could be jerked free from the leader.

  Another method, and one still more advocated at this date, is to troll the bait back a hundred and fifty feet or more, with a lighter lead. The revolving bait is considered a desirable feature. In this style the teasers also were dragged quite far back.

  Modifications and variations of these methods are numerous.

  To catch fish is not all of fishing, to be sure, and any device or method is permissible so long as it pleases an angler and lends to his sport that personal and peculiar fetish which is one of the joys of the game. I doubt that there ever was a fisherman who did not conceive and invent some gadget all his own, and some manner of using it that to him was the best. That is one of the many reasons why fishing, to my way of thinking, is the greatest of all sports.

  The possibilities of Australian big-game fishing intrigue me and excite me more and more, as I fish myself, and receive more and more word from different and widely separated places on Australia's grand coast of thirteen thousand miles.

  I expected to find Australia and New Zealand somewhat alike, and the fishing also. They are totally different. In any fishing trip, such as I call worthy of the name, there are many considerations that make for the ultimate success and memorable record. The beauty and color of the surrounding country, the birds and snakes and animals, the trees and hills, the long sandy beaches, and the desolate ragged shorelines, the lonely islands--all these and many more appeal to me as much as the actual roaming the sea, in rain and shine, in calm and storm, and the catching of great game fish.

  One of the pleasantest experiences I have ever had, and one the joy of which will grow in memory, is to be awakened in the dusk of dawn by the kookaburras. That is unique. The big mollyhawks of New Zealand, the laughing gulls of California, that awaken you at dawn and are things never forgotten, cannot compare with these strange and homely and humorous jackasses of the Australian woods.

  We ran our score of big fish caught up to twenty-one in seven weeks, which list, considering that half this time was too bad weather to fish, and that it included my black Marlin record of four hundred and eighty pounds, two of the same around four hundred pounds, and a really rare fish, the green Fox thresher, must be considered very good indeed.

  It turned out, however, that my last day off Bermagui was really the most thrilling and profitable to Australia, as well as to me.

  This was an unusually beautiful day for any sea. The morning was sunny, warm, and still. There seemed to be the balminess of spring in the air.

  We got an early start, a little after sunrise, with the idea of running far offshore--"out wide," the market fishermen call it--into the equatorial stream.

  I had been out in this current several times off Montague Island, but not very far, and not to study it particularly. The camera crew came on the Avalon with me, owing to their boat being in need of engine repairs.

  Bait was easy to catch and quite abundant, which fact always lends an auspicious start to a fish day. The boys yelled in competition as they hauled in the yellowtail (king fish), bonito, and salmon.

  Shearwater ducks were wheeling over the schools of bait, and the gannets were making their magnificent dives from aloft. A gannet, by the way, is the grandest of all sea-fowl divers.

  Mr. Rogers had been among the Marlin the day before, fifteen miles northeast of Montague, and Mr. Lynn had also been among them twenty miles directly east of Bermagui. Our plan was to locate one or other of them, and find the fish. As a matter of fact, we ran seventy miles that day and could not even get sight of them. But we found the fish and they did not.

  This lent additional substantiation to my theory that in a fast-moving clean current, fish will never be found in the same place the next day.

  It is useless to take marks on the mountains for the purpose of locating a place out at sea where the fish were found today, because they go with the current and the bait. In deep water, say two hundred and twenty-five fathoms off Bermagui, the bottom has no influence whatever on the fish.

  In shallow water the bottom has really great influence.

  We ran thirty miles by noon. No fish sign of any kind--no birds or bait or splashes or fins--just one vast heaving waste of lonely sea, like a shimmering opal.

  After lunch I told the outfit that I guessed it was up to me to find some kind of fish, so I climbed forward and stood at the mast to scan the sea.

  This was an old familiar, thrilling custom of mine, and had been learned over many years roaming the sea for signs of tuna or broadbill swordfish.

  In the former case you see splashes or dark patches on the glassy sea; in the latter you see the great sickle fins of that old gl
adiator Xiphias gladius, surely the most wonderful spectacle for a sea angler.

  In this case, however, all I sighted was a hammerhead shark. His sharp oval fin looked pretty large, and as his acquisition might tend to good fortune, I decided to drop him a bait and incidentally show my camera crew, who had been complaining of hard battles with sharks, how easy it could be done.

  Using a leader with a small hook, I had the boatman put on a small piece of bait, and crossed the track of the hammerhead with it. When he struck the scent in the water he went wild, and came rushing up the wake, his big black fin weaving to and fro, until he struck. Hammerheads have rather small mouths, but they are easily hooked by this method. In a couple of minutes I had hold of this fellow.

  After hooking him I was careful not to pull hard on him. That is the secret of my method with sharks, of which I have caught a thousand. They are all alike. They hate the pull of a line and will react violently, according to what pressure is brought to bear. If they are not "horsed," as the saying goes, they can be led up to the boat to the gaff. This means a lot of strenuous exercise for the boatmen, but only adds to the fun. Shooting, as is employed here in Australia, and harpooning, as done in New Zealand, disqualify a fish.

  I had this hammerhead up to the boat in twelve minutes, and I never heaved hard on him once. Emil, my still photographer, a big strong fellow, had had a three-hour battle with one a little smaller, and he simply marveled at the trick I had played on the shark, and him, too.

  There was a merry splashing mOlTe at the gaffing of this hammerhead, in which all the outfit engaged. It was the largest hammerhead I had seen in Australian waters, probably close to six hundred pounds. Off the Perlos Islands I have seen eighteen-foot hammerheads, with heads a third that wide. I understand the Great Barrier Reef has twenty-two-foot hammerheads. Australia is verily the land, or water, for sharks; and I am vastly curious to see what a big one will do to me. Mr. Bullen was four and a half hours on his nine hundred and eighty pound tiger shark, and I have heard of longer fights. No doubt I am due for a good licking, but that will be fun.

  We raised a Marlin presently, and I ran back to the cockpit to coax this fellow to bite; and we had an exciting half-hour photographing and catching him--a good sized striped spearfish of two hundred and ninety pounds.

  Not long after this event I sighted white splashes far to the southeast.

  I yelled to the boys, "Tuna splashes!"

  We ran on, and in due time I saw dark patches on the smooth surface, and then schools of leaping bait fish, and then the gleaming flash of a leaping tuna in the air. He was big, too, easily one hundred and fifty pounds. Emil, who had seen this superb fish at Catalina, yelled his enthusiasm. There were scattered sharp splashes all over the sea. This meant tuna were feeding.

  While Peter hooked up the engine and we bore down on these dark patches, I put on a tuna gig such as we use in the South Seas. Long before we reached the agitated waters I had a fine strike. Tuna always hook themselves. This one ran down and down, and had run four hundred yards of line off the reel before he slowed up.

  I stopped him right under the boat, and then had some strenuous work pumping and winding him up. It required more than half an hour, that is, counting his narrowing circles under the boat. The sun was directly overhead, the sea perfectly calm, the water clear as crystal; and it was a striking picture to see that dazzling tuna as he came nearer and nearer to the boat.

  I hoped that he would weigh a hundred pounds and cautioned Peter to make sure at the gaff. When hauled aboard this fish presented a most beautiful sight. He was a yellow-fin tuna, not to be confounded with the Australian and Western Pacific tunny; and the opal and blue and gold colors, blending in a dazzling effect, as bright as sunlight on jewels, were so lovely that it seemed a shame to kill their possessor.

  But this was a valuable catch, much more important than any size or species of swordfish. I was simply delighted.

  In my correspondence for three years with Australian anglers and market fishermen I had been told of vast schools of large round blue fish that had been sighted offshore in July and August. These fish had been sighted, but not classified. I concluded they were tuna, and with this lucky catch I had verified my opinion.

  Yellow-fin tuna furnish California with one of its big commercial assets--a fifty-million-dollar-a-year canned-tuna industry. There are floating canneries on the sea and canneries on shore. San Pedro, a thriving town, depends upon the tuna catch. For thirty years this business has been increasing. Large boats have been built, with refrigeration machinery and huge storage capacity, and these vessels ply far in pursuit of the schools of tuna. In 1927, when I found yellow-fin tuna at the Galapagos Islands, and showed motion pictures to verify it, the Japanese and American fleets were hot after these fresh schools. Five hundred tons of tuna, at a hundred dollars a ton, meant big profit.

  Australian commercial interests have something to think about. It can be depended upon--these yellow-fin tuna are more and more in demand. Japanese ships now come clear to the Californian and Mexican coasts, and down off South America. It will be a close run to Australian waters.

  The extent and abundance of this annual migration of yellow-fin tuna off the South Coast should be ascertained; and the result might well be a tremendous business for Australians, and what is more, a valuable and inexpensive food supply bound to take place of the more expensive meats.

  In the United States the consumption of fish as food has increased forty per cent in the last ten years.

  Chapter V

  Crossing the river on the ferry at Bateman Bay, from which the wonderful Toll Gates can be seen out at sea, I conceived an idea that this place had marvelous potentialities for fishing. As a matter of fact, the place haunted me so that I went back, motored all around the bay, walked out upon the many wooded capes that projected far out toward the sentinel Toll Gates, patrolled the curved sandy beaches, and finally interviewed the market fishermen. The result was that I broke camp at Bermagui and chose a lovely site three miles out from Bateman Bay, where we pitched camp anew. It turned out that the vision in my mind's eye had been right.

  This camp was the most beautiful and satisfactory of all the hundreds of camps I have had in different countries. How it will turn out from a fishing standpoint remains to be seen. But I would like to gamble on my instinct.

  I fished all the way up from Bermagui, and the distance must have been all of fifty miles. I trolled a good-sized bonito for eight hours without a rise. The north-east breeze had freshened the day, and at four o'clock the sea was ridged white and blue. It was rough enough to make me hold on to my chair with one hand and my rod in the other. I wanted to take the first swordfish in to Bateman Bay.

  There was a long cape to the north-west, standing far out into the ocean.

  It appeared we would never reach it. But at last we did, and saw the grand opening of Bateman Bay guarded by those noble Toll Gates, great bare rocks, standing aloof and august, facing the sea, and shadowed with the western sunset lights.

  It was with most unusual excitement that I sighted the familiar and thrilling purple flashes of a swordfish back of my bait. "There he is!"

  And he had the bait, to swerve and speed away.

  "Well, it's about time. Nine hours!" called Peter, as he threw out the clutch. "Be sure you hook him."

  I made sure of that, and for half an hour, in a rough sea, I had a hard fight with a game fish. He almost got away. We were proud to run into the little cove we had renamed Crescent Bay, where my camp had been pitched while I fished the day through.

  There was an enthusiastic crowd waiting, but nothing to the large and vociferous one that greeted us when we trucked the swordfish up to town.

  Most, in fact almost all, of the inhabitants had never seen a swordfish.

  The reception the townspeople gave me was second only to what they gave the fish. So my start at Bateman Bay was auspicious.

  Then, following that lucky opening, we had bad weather. Days of
storm! No sooner would it clear up and give us hope of sunshine and warmth when it blew again. From all directions!

  We ran out almost every day, certainly the days that it was possible to fish. We did not see a swordfish. I was not discouraged at this, because I have learned that patience and endurance are imperative for a deep-sea fisherman. Besides, we occasionally hooked a shark, and really I wanted a big shark more keenly than a swordfish.

  After ten days the weather cleared and grew warm. That very first morning, drifting with a bait deep off Black Rock, I had a magnificent strike which I was sure came from a black Marlin. He took the bait easily, slowly made off, began to go faster and faster, and rise to the surface, until Peter and I yelled for the inevitable jump. It did not come. That fish got rid of the hook without leaping or showing his size; and I was a bitterly disappointed angler.

  I did not, however, have long to bemoan my bad fortune. The camera-boat hooked up with a fish, and I couldn't miss that. There were always excitement and fun galore when my camera crew got hold of a fish. So I ran out to them. It would be quite beyond me to describe adequately what I witnessed. I shall record it in Bowen's terms:

  "Gus Bagnard, my second camera man, was most eager to catch a swordfish.

  From his conversation I was sure that he thought it a simple matter, merely a case of tossing a bait overboard and pulling in the fish.

  "He had been on the camera boat the day that I conceived the idea that if two teasers were good, more would be better. The idea may have been all right, but the execution was terrible. The extra teasers were tied with cord that had long since outlived its usefulness, and consequently kept breaking.

  "A pleasant morning was had by all, in circling about, netting lost teasers. It was because of this that Gus hooked his swordfish.