Chapter 12: Pan Fry the Big Ones

The following Monday morning dawned bright and clear. Dawned literally. My phone was insistent at 5.15.

“Jesus woman! Can’t you sleep or something?”

“Sorry – I guess it is a bit early. It’s just that it’s going to be a fine day and you said...” Pauline trailed off.

“It’s too late to go out in the dinghy this morning. You are the best part of 45 min away...”

“That’s only 6am. That’s not too late is it?” Her eagerness was palpable.

“You haven’t done this before, and I don’t want to rush. I haven’t got gear together, I haven’t thawed any bait or berley, and the tide’s not brilliant for an early morning fishing expedition.

“Oh” Pauline’s disappointment was equally palpable.

“How about you have some breakfast, pack a bag, and come out around ten. Plan to stay the night, and we’ll launch my big boat and go out a bit further.”

By the time Pauline arrived very shortly after nine, I had gassed up the boat, hitched up the trailer, and loaded cold chicken, bait, berley, ice, and fishing gear. I also loaded a big beanbag. I had a plan.

“You call this ten o’clock?” I almost managed to sound stern. Pauline’s face fell and she looked at me keenly. My own face must have given me away, because the sad look was quickly replaced by Little Red Riding Hood.

“I can think of a few interesting ways to pass an hour!” I was tempted, but stayed strong.

“Let’s do the basic safety stuff first, then go to sea. You are here for the night aren’t you?” She was and we did.

It took half an hour to sort Pauline out with sunblock, clothing, neoprene boots, and an inflatable lifejacket. She could swim in the pool, but had rarely swum in the sea, so I encouraged her to follow my example and wear it as a matter of routine. We went over the location and use of the VHF radio, the flares and sea anchor, and talked about staying with the boat no matter what.

“What if it sinks?”

“It won’t. It’s unsinkable”

“So was the Titanic”

“This one really is. Besides - if we see an iceberg, I’ll eat it!” I figured Pauline was already pretty nearly overloaded with information and I saw no sense in telling her all about the watertight compartments and design for stability blah de blah. This was supposed to be fun!

We towed the boat to the ramp near my place and with Pauline already aboard, we launched without drama. I was very conscious that this was her first time aboard a small boat, and I was watching to see how quickly she learned to transfer her weight to maintain our level trim as we bobbled a little in the relative calm of the Bay. She seemed quite comfortable. I hoped it lasted, but was mentally prepared to abandon the trip at the first sign of anything more than minor discomfort.

“When can we fish?” We were barely two hundred metres off the ramp, still threading our way through the boats moored in the bay. This woman was keen!

“Soon. Grab me the blue rod” I pointed forward through the companionway. Pauline stood, just as we hit a small wave and rolled to starboard slightly. She lost her balance, gave a squawk, and fell down against the starboard cockpit seat, fortunately not hard.

“Shit!”

“Are you ok?” There was no point in throttling back. We were only doing about four knots through the anchorage.

“I think so.” She didn’t sound it. I decided to distract her further with the prospect of catching a fish.

“We can start fishing as soon as you get me that rod. Be careful with your balance and feel which way the boat is leaning from moment to moment, and shift your weight to lean against it. Hold on to the cabin when you reach through for the rod.” She did, and I soon streamed a small white plastic lure 20m astern.

“You hold the rod.” She did, somewhat gingerly.

“How will I know when I’ve caught a fish?”

“The rod will bend and you will feel the fish kicking and tugging on the end of the line. If it’s a big fish, it will pull line off the reel, and it will make a clicking sound.”

Pauline was distracted by a gull swooping close to check us out, and I reached out and gave her line a solid tug. The rod bent, and as the tension overcame the drag I had set on the reel, line peeled off and the reel clicks were so close together they sounded like a shrill scream. Pauline just squawked.

“Jesus! You bastard!

“You never know when your lure will get hit.”

“I’ll hang on tight. Why would a fish bite it anyway? It wouldn’t taste good and doesn’t look much like a fish”

“The predatory fish see it in silhouette from below. It looks like a small fish trying to escape. It triggers a strike reflex”

“Sort of like when you see the silhouette of my nipples from below it triggers a spurt reflex?” Her grin was devilish. I was glad I had loaded the beanbag.

We were a hundred metres or so from the place where the harbour merges with the open sea. The outgoing tide was meeting an incoming swell, and the waves in the rip that resulted were quite steep and chaotic, even though only a metre high. I knew that the next few minutes would test Pauline’s resolve.

“In a minute or two it’s going to get lumpy. Let’s put the rod in a holder so you can hold on with both hands.”

Pauline slipped the butt of the rod into the piece of plastic pipe designed to hold it upright, and held on to edge of her seat and the coaming round the cockpit. I watched her carefully as we hit the first of the steep waves, and bucked our way over, round, and through them. For a moment or two, our movement was quite violent, but although her knuckles on the coaming were white, Pauline seemed to be enjoying herself.

“Reassure me his is safe!”

“These waves are about a metre. This boat has survived four metre waves”

“Shit!”

“It wasn’t nice. But it was my own stupid fault, and I’ll never put the boat or myself in that situation again.” By now we were through the rip, the waves were smaller and smoother, and the boat rose up and over them gently. “See, things are smoothing out now. We are through the roughest bit of the trip.”

The scenery was magnificent. The whole area is volcanic, and the shoreline consists of craggy peaks covered in native forest. Pauline couldn’t have cared less. She was solely interested in killing fish.

I steered towards a headland where the little swell was breaking on the rocks, producing a small area of white water where I knew the bubbles produced by the breaking waves would provide cover for the predatory fish to hang out until a meal came by. I hoped our lure would elicit a strike. It did. A good one.

The reel screamed, the rod bent, and Pauline grabbed for it without being told, as I put the motor in neutral and we slowed to a stop. The fight was on. Kahawai look a bit like trout, but pound for pound, they fight at least three times as hard. Five pounds is a good one, and the one Pauline was hooked into was a very good one. It kept taking line.

I coached Pauline to tighten the drag on the reel, and the bend in the rod increased, but the fish stopped taking line, and as Pauline began to pump the rod tip up and down she soon found she could recover line as the fish tired. She was blown away when the Kahawai jumped clear of the water five metres from the boat and shook its head in an attempt to get free of the hook, but she kept pumping the fish closer until I was able to grab the line just above the lure and swing the fish aboard.