American Angler in Australia (1937)

by Grey, Zane

  On a heavy fish deep down, the method of procedure is a short strong lift of the rod and a quick wind of the reel. You don't get in many inches each time. For a little while this is okay, but it grows to be monotonous, then tiresome, and at length painful. Of course, I had the whaler coming and he did not recover a single foot of line I gained.

  While I was doing this he swam inshore and obligingly returned to the neighborhood of the spot where he had made the fatal mistake of taking my bait. There, at the end of two hours and something, I heaved that whaler up to the waiting boatmen. They treated him pretty rough, I was bound to admit, and they added insult to injury by cutting a strip of meat out of him for my next bait.

  This whaler was one of the bronze-backed kind, about which Dr. Stead had talked at length. It was rather rare, and a harder fighter than the black or ordinary whaler. I could corroborate that, as it had given me as hard a fight as the eight-hundred-and-ninety-pound whaler I had caught at Bateman Bay.

  Presently we were anchored again and I was fishing with a long line out and a float which buoyed my bait somewhat near the surface. Peter was boiling the billy and Love was puttering around, setting the lunch table.

  As I seldom ate any lunch while fishing, this procedure meant little to me, except to amuse me. I hoped to hook a fish before they sat down to tea, as I had done so many times with Peter in New Zealand. Usually we drifted while the lunch process was under way. I hooked and caught the first broadbill swordfish ever landed in New Zealand at this hour. It required several hours, to be exact, and for one monumental occasion Peter Williams forgot all about the boiling billy.

  Off Sydney Heads this day my evil wishes were frustrated by fate, however, and the boys had eaten and drunk, and cleaned up their table, before I did get a strike. All of a sudden, while I was watching my bobbing cork, my daydreams were dispelled by a big gray fin cutting the water out there above my bait. But suddenly, when my cork shot under, I realized that fin belonged to a tiger shark which already had my bait. He had come up to take a look at the cork, and perhaps to bite my line. Mako often do that to floating tackle. This gray tiger, a good big one, flashed at my cork as he dragged it under. Before he could cut the line, however, I struck the hook into him hard and deep. He sheered away, plowed along the surface, then disappeared and went down deep. While he took line, Love frantically hauled up the anchor and Peter got the boat in motion.

  In a few moments we were all set for battle and getting away from the other boats. I had hung, as we call it, another big fish. That for which every big-game fisherman fishes had come to pass.

  During the succeeding hour and more I gave this tiger what we American fishermen slangily call the works. I whipped him thoroughly, but something happened that hindered me from completing the job. There came a queer jerky giving of my tight line, accompanied by peculiar motions of the rod tip. Usually this thing is caused by the gradual tearing of the hook from its firm hold. Many a fish I had lost after a few of these happenings.

  In this case, however, nothing happened. I did not lose my fish. But the jerky slackings in my line continued, until suddenly I realized that they were caused by the shark rolling up in my leader. He would roll up a few feet, then the leader would slip or loosen, with the consequent vibrations. This was almost as bad as the tearing out of the hook. For almost any kind of a shark will roll up in the leader until he comes to the line, and then he will bite through that.

  I told Peter my suspicions and he said he had arrived at the same conclusion. "Lam into him now or you'll be losing him," he added.

  A violent and persistent lamming, as Peter called it, brought that tiger shark to the surface. He came up belly first, white and wide and long, and the middle and upper part of his body was so tightly wound up in my wire leader that it cut into him. There was no coil around his gills and the last one circled his head just below his jaw. But he could open his mouth. Believe me he gaped those wide fanged jaws and shut them with the sound of a steel trap. In fact he was a trapped tiger and as mad as a hornet. He threshed his long tail and curdled the water white. But he did not appear to be able to turn over or swim. He just surged and wagged.

  My swivel was scarcely two feet from those jaws. So he had thirty-three feet of wire leader wrapped around him.

  "Hold hard, sir!" shouted Peter, as he leaned down with big gloved hand extended. "Just in time. A few more minutes and he'd bitten off... Billy, stand by with the gaff... Wow!!!"

  When Love stuck the gaff into that shark it leaped out, half of its glistening wet body in the air, and frightfully close to the boat. The gaff did not hold. But Peter did. There was a tremendous tussle and splash. The tiger was hog-tied in my leader, but nevertheless he gave the men a bad few minutes before he was securely gaffed and roped. Even after we started to tow him ashore he kept snapping at the wire noose which had proved his undoing.

  Resting from my exertions and watching this shark while I seriously recounted the actions of gaffing and tying up to the boat, I pondered over the hazard and the difficulty of this necessary sporting procedure.

  I did not blame Bullen and these other shark fishermen for shooting sharks at close quarters out of a small boat, in some cases smaller than the shark. An attempt to gaff them would be foolhardy. I will go on record by saying it is better to catch a tiger shark or any great shark on a hand line, and shoot or harpoon him when he comes up to the boat, than not to catch him at all. For it is a fine thing to kill these brutes.

  All the same, that is not the great, wonderful, sporting way to catch your big shark. The more risks you run, the harder and longer your fight with him, the stronger and finer rod and reel and line you can afford, the more creditable your achievement. There are many reasons to prove my contention, some of which I have mentioned heretofore, and one I will here repeat.

  Many sharks, particularly the mako and tiger, often swim up to the boat before they are in the least whipped. In case of the mako, perhaps also the tiger, too, he comes up to see what is wrong and to do you harm. If you shoot him or harpoon him, then you destroy in one fell stroke aft the commendable and manly reason for fishing for him at all, except the one of killing him.

  I have never known an angler who, having once had the thrill of bringing his great fish to gaff and seeing it gaffed, ever went back to the more primitive method outlined above. Bullen himself gaffed Bowen's eight-hundred-and-eighty-nine-pound tiger shark, and his boatman later gaffed a five-hundred-pound white shark. He assures me he will never shoot another. This is the nucleus of the idea I would like to inculcate in all Australian anglers. The sport is greater than they have realized.

  I venture to hope that the great man-eating sharks will some day have the honor accorded to lions and elephants.

  Chapter X

  By May 1st we had finished our south coast fishing and packed to sail on the 5th for Hayman Island of the Great Barrier Reef.

  Four months, at least half of which was unfishable on account of high winds and rough seas! I hesitate to state what number of fish we might have caught had we had a normal season of warm weather. But it always blows great guns when I go fishing, and otherwise handicaps me with obstacles.

  Altogether we caught sixty-seven big fish, weighing over twenty-one thousand pounds, nearly ten tons. This seems incredible, but it is true, and really is nothing compared with what we might have done under favorable conditions. Two-thirds of this number fell to my rod. Bowen and his camera men, and mine, caught the rest.

  My catches of a green thresher Fox shark, the first ever known to be caught, and the ninety-one-pound yellow-fin tuna, also the first ever taken in Australian waters, were surely the high lights of my good fortune. To repeat, however, no one can guess what I might have taken had the weather given us a break. Perhaps one of those giant white-death sharks! Or surely a broadbill swordfish, that old gladiator and king of the Seven Seas.

  No doubt a few words about tackle or gear in this summary will not be amiss.

  I used three big tack
les, favoring the Coxe, Hardy-Zane Grey and Kovalovsky reels, carrying a thousand and more yards of thirty-nine-thread Swastika lines. I really did not need fifteen hundred yards of line as I had on the big Kovalovsky, but as I was always expecting an unheard-of and monster fish, I wanted to be ready for any kind of a run.

  My outfit on the camera boat had half a dozen tackles with reels not so large as mine, carrying thirty-six and thirty-nine-thread lines.

  Needless to say, they ruined all these tackles, but the fun I had watching them fight fish was worth the sacrifice. I could hardly ask them to follow me around, running all over the ocean for four months without fishing.

  For Marlin we used fifteen-foot leaders or traces, on which were mounted 13| Pflueger swordfish hooks. These traces were made out of nineteen-thread airplane cable wire and were not suitable for big sharks.

  We lost many leaders on hammerheads and other sharks. I had an eleven-foot mako bite one of these leaders through and escape, after leaping prodigiously.

  We used hickory rods and some dualwoods made of black palm and hickory.

  These were the best obtainable in the United States. I will not recommend them here because toward the end of my stay in Australia I found that Australian big-game rods are superior to ours. Bullen's Atlanta rod made by Southam is the most wonderful rod I have used. It is built of split cane in six pieces. Beyond doubt it is the most beautifully made and finished, the strongest and springiest, the most enduring rod I have ever bent upon a big fish.

  The saffron-heart rod runs it a close second. As a matter of fact I am not perfectly sure which is the better. But I have not given the saffron-heart rod the same test that I gave the other.

  Also it is no longer needful for Australian anglers to use American or English reels. The two new hand-made big-game-fishing reels, built for Fagan and Bullen, are just about as good as any reels I own. Upon my return to Australia I shall try out one of these.

  But I have found fault with Australian traces and hooks, and especially Australian lines. These must be improved to compete with the hand-made Swastika lines.

  It seems hardly necessary to say much about methods of fishing for swordfish. Most anglers have already learned that trolling with a revolving bait far back of the boat, and weighted at that, is just wasting time. Of course a starved Marlin would bite on anything; and it means little that a few fish have been caught by such methods.

  Teasers trolled far back is another mistake. They should be close to the stern of the boat, around thirty feet, so that you can see the Marlin come, and pull them away from him.

  There is no set time after the strike to hook your fish. That is something which has to do with the feel of the strike. In any event you cannot hook all of the Marlin that strike, nor catch all you hook! The great thing to learn is to find them--to run the wheels off your boat until you do find them, and that takes patience, endurance, and eyesight.

  I attribute my success more to the last than to anything else.

  I had intended to include in this book all my data on man-eating sharks, and a chronicle of my three-and-a-half months among the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. But including photographs, this would make too large a volume. Besides, I aim to go back to the Barrier. It is a most fascinating and remarkable place--fifteen thousand square miles of waters and reefs, which have not been fished and which have incredible possibilities. I was able to identify, if not classify, three new kinds of spearfish that have never yet been taken on a rod. One is what was called a baby swordfish, from three to four feet long, which is really a matured fish. In shape it resembles a black Marlin.

  A huge fifteen-foot swordfish with a short bill and broad stripes has been seen by market fishermen. And a species of sailfish, different from those I was the first to catch in the Gulf Stream, on the Pacific Coast, and in the South Seas, has been taken by market fishermen. This sailfish has a dorsal fin that is highest at the forward end and slopes back to the tail. These three fish alone will make the fame of the Barrier.

  The queen fish, a beautiful silvery dolphin-like leaper, is one of the greatest fish I have caught, equal to the gallo, or rooster fish, of the Mexican coast. The mackerel that occurs in large schools is a fine light-tackle fish for anglers who do not care for the strenuous work.

  There is also a sea pike, a big barracuda-like fish that grows to twelve feet and more and which would be wonderful game. Undoubtedly there are more and larger fish to discover around these reefs.

  The future of Australian fishing is no longer problematical.

  Marlin have been sighted off Sydney Heads every month in the year. Three days before I sailed on the Mariposa, August 16th, a market fisherman saw five Marlin riding the swells not far offshore. In winter! A few days before that one of my men, flying down from Newcastle, saw a school of huge tiger sharks, none, he claimed, under eighteen feet, attacking a baby whale and fighting its mother. The airmen circled lower and flew round and round, not only to observe the fight, but to make sure of what was happening; and they saw the tiger sharks tear the baby whale to pieces.

  Another market fisherman quite recently saw a white shark much longer than his boat, which was twenty-two feet.

  Then, as I have written about before, and wish to repeat, there are a number of cases where market fishermen were towing sharks too large to pull on board, and have had these huge white devils take them in one bite. A ten- or twelve-foot shark snapped off in one bite!

  A thirty-nine foot white shark was stranded at Montague Island after swallowing a small shark that had been caught on a set line. A nineteen-foot white shark was shot and harpooned off the pier at Bermagui.

  Dr. David Stead, of Sydney, a scientist of international reputation, corroborates my claim that there are white sharks up to eighty feet and more. If there are not, where do the white-shark teeth, five inches across the base, come from? These have been dredged from the ocean bed.

  This matter of Australian sharks is astounding. The waters around Australia are alive with many species of sharks. Why not some unknown species, huge and terrible? Who can tell what forms of life swim and battle in the ocean depths?

  I predict that if I myself do not catch one of these incredible monsters, some one else will. I believe there are eighty-foot sharks. Rare, surely, but they occur! I believed in the sea serpent before the English scientist, Lieut.-Commander R. T. Gould, collected his authentic data and made the myth a fact.

  It takes imagination to be a fisherman--to envision things and captures to be. Every fisherman, even if he is a skeptic and ridicules me and any supporters about these great fish, betrays himself when he goes fishing, for he goes because he imagines there are trout or salmon or Marlin, and surely a big one, waiting to strike for him. If I had not had a vivid and fertile imagination I would not have been the first to catch sailfish and swordfish in different and unfished waters of the world.

  Off Freemantle large tunny have been caught by marketmen and hundreds too large to hold have broken away.

  Then the West Coast of Australia! Here will be found the grandest fish.

  For years I have known that the Indian Ocean contains the most marvelous unfished waters, and the greatest of fish in numbers and size. I have been on the track of the monster Indian Ocean sailfish for years. But never until I met the Danish scientist, Schmidt, world authority on eels, who had seen these sailfish, did I really believe the data I had accumulated.

  "Sailfish?" he repeated after me. "Oh yes indeed. I have seen them like a fleet of sailing schooners."

  "And--how big?" I choked, now realizing I was on the eve of my most wonderful discovery.

  "Thirty to forty feet, I should say. Their sails were easily ten feet high and fifteen feet long."

  Shark's Bay, three hundred miles north of Perth, is known to contain schools of huge sharks.

  Schools of sharks do not inhabit waters that are not full of fish. All the way up the West Coast to Darwin, these great fish I believe in and have been writing about have been seen.


  I could fill pages with data I have collected. Some of it, most of it, is fact.

  So I make my claim for Australian waters and reiterate it and will stand by it. So great is my faith that already I have enlisted the help of the Australian Government and my influential friends there, motion-picture and radio people, all of which, added to private resources and unlimited tackle, will be used to prove that Australia has fish and fishing which will dwarf all the rest known in the world today.

  As for the dream and the color and the glory of such a romance, such an adventure, these are for the time being overshadowed by the immensity of the plan, and its scope, and its appalling difficulties. But these will pass and then there will come the joy of anticipation--of trolling sunny strange waters, of purple coral reefs and strips of white sand, and the shore haunts of the aboriginal--the myriads of shells, of weird birds and grand trees--and always the striving for the unattainable, whether it be a great fish or the ultimate beauty.

  I have been ridiculed and criticized for claiming that Australia's thirteen thousand miles of coast would yield the greatest game fish of any waters yet discovered in the world, and all the year round.

  Years ago when I predicted seven-hundred-, eight-hundred-, and thousand-pound Marlin for New Zealand, I was laughed at, even in New Zealand itself. But I and my fishing partners caught black Marlin of these weights, and established the marvelous fishing that New Zealand has enjoyed for a protracted and waning period.

  After five years of correspondence with Australian scientists, missionaries, market fishermen, and sportsmen, and seven months of practical and strenuous observation and fishing, I stake my reputation that Australia will yield the most incredible and magnificent big-game fish of known and unknown species that the fishing world has ever recorded.

  Added to what I just wrote about Great Barrier fish, let me append one more fact.

  I have located broadbill swordfish, the genuine Ziphias gladius, in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria, spawning on the white sand, as thick as fence pickets!