Swimming With Giants

Swimming With Giants John Anderson

 Perhaps some background…..

Off Greymouth the continental shelf jags in, a structure known as the hokitika trench. In this trench spawn hoki, which is what our fillet-o-fish / fish fingers etc are made of.. Now, at the same time the JV’s (Joint Ventures-between the commercial NZ fishing companies and monster Russian/ Korean/ Japanese etc super trawlers that fish the quota on behalf of the kiwi companies) are trawling the bejesus out of the hoki, along that same trench are migrating giant northern bluetailed tuna (like in the Monterey Aquarium) and they don’t mind the odd scavenged hoki. They stay in this area for a couple of weeks then move on to places unknown. The theory goes that they are quite temperature sensitive and don’t like going below the thermacline but have discovered that they can follow the JVs around scavenging because the JVs are perpetually dumping frames etc from the processing factories located within their hulls. The tuna , being clever bastards, have also learned that when they hear the trawl ‘doors’( these are big paravanes which hold the net on the seabed) ‘bonging’ as they hit the hull as the trawl net is retrieved, if they race to the back of the boat and then down to just above the thermacline, soon enough the trawl net will appear, disgorging fish like nobodies business and they can feed on these until the net is hauled aboard the boat, a process which takes longer than 5 minutes.

So being spearos and all, last year we went down and followed the last JV of the season, waiting for him to haul his net but he didn’t so we never saw a tuna. Cost of the day; $1000+. Ouch

Fast forward a year and Ed, Rambo and Graham are all keen on going down again. Rambo was taking his duck down to save costs but still… Problem is that I don’t have the fancy gear needed for fish of this size so have no chance of landing one. The year before I’d gone down for the experience but now I’d done it there was no way I was dishing out again on a trip where I knew I would not land a fish. That gear costs about $3000 and even then you’re way under gunned for fish of this size and are still relying on a very fluky shot. So I declined. And bugger me dazed if they didn’t go down without me and get just that fluky shot I referred to and landed a tuna of 204kg!! Result. Go the Boys!!. I was naturally a bit gutted not to be involved but dem da breaks.
Sticking with idiots…

Fate, though, does have a funny way and next thing some guys off a show here called ‘The Fishing Show’ are calling, coz they’re going down and really need a cameraman for underwater footage. Some twit had recommended me!, which just proves what we already know about idiot stickers; specifically, that they’re idiots. Of course, I wasn’t going to let on that I’d no idea what I was doing; after all, I’d been promised free beer and maybe I’d be on T.V!! Wow, like, famous!! Yeah, famous enough to have groupies. Then maybe Scarlett Johanssen would be mine.

Hmmm, Scarlett Johanssen

“Hi, My names Scarlett. Are you Long John, that famous guy?”

“Ummmmmm, yup”…

Man, I was going.

We flew toChristchurchand drove over the Arthur’s Pass to Greymouth. It was with some trepidation that I embarked on a car journey with these guys- after all, when meeting other divers for the first time, you talk diving; with new work associates you can talk shop, but with idiot stick-ers?

Turns out I’d worried needlessly as the minute we hit the road we got straight back off it again into the carpark of the first tavern of the day. It was about midday. Something told me we were going to get along just fine.
The barmaid at the Revington, in Greymouth, kicked us out at midnight.(so I’m told)

Next morning, not so early, we joined up with our skipper and deckie on the Cascade. Soon after our arrival on the wharf, an appreciative crowd of groupies had gathered around the shows host, Matt, who, it turns out, has a reputation for knowing a thing or two about flailing an idiot stick. Problem was, though, that these groupies were all middle aged men in aran sweaters and seaboots. . Maybe this fame caper wasn’t all it’s jacked up to be.

I searched the crowd for Scarlett but if she was there she stayed hidden. A stalker eh? Kinky, Scarlett…… and kinda flattering

Cruising out to the grounds, I watched the boys unveiling their toys. Straight away I had that Matt character pegged for a real idiot as his fishing stick thing was only about a metre or so in length when even a child could tell you that a good idiot stick-er has a real long pole. Further, his was made of graphite or carbon fibre and not of fiberglass. See, unbeknownst to these idiots, I also know more than a little about fishing; I was king of the wharf rats at the Glendowie boat ramp and once even caught a kahawai. Well, at least, I hooked it- bloody thing broke the line.

I resisted the urge to set these morons straight as to the suitability of their gear and just smiled at them indulgently.

So, we get out to the first JV and he happens to be hauling and I get the call to kit up and jump in. While I had played the moment over in my head numerous times, I must admit that the reality of jumping, alone, into such a dynamic predatory scenario, 50 odd mile out to sea was not as delicious as I’d imagined. Add to that the heady combination of a fairly decent hangover and a lazy swell and I was pretty partial to telling the assembled idiot stickers to ‘stick it up their arses’ and go back to my bunk. But they’d obviously gone to some time and expense to get me there and I was heavily outnumbered so, with a ‘Hail Mary’, I rolled off the swim step and descended just as the cod end of the net chugged past, in nice clean water with the lighting just so. And there they were, filing up behind the bag, tuna, just like fat bikies behind a truck. Slowly, they trundled by while I tried my best to keep the camera steady.
Well, that went well.

I jumped back on the swim step and two things are sort of going on 1) I’m nutting off and smiling like a moron and fizzing away to myself and 2) the skipper, once he saw I was clear of the twin props, motored up to the bag again and Andy pitched in a hoki, hooked through the snout. It lasted about 5 seconds.

The big tiagra reel began to make a god awful scream and I was just about to point out to the idiots that their stupid reel had shat itself when Andy flicked a lever under the reel and the noise stopped. Turns out it’s made to do that so if the stick’s left untended, those on board are alerted that it’s losing line. I don’t know why they can’t just watch the bloody thing. Stupid idiot stick-ers. So the fish takes off and the oddest thing happened.

Now, if you had hooked a fish, you’d think you’d just wind it in …right, but these idiots decide to chase it with the boat…..backwards. What the #$@%? That’s right, backwards. It was only being rendered speechless by their combined incompetence that stopped me from screaming, raging indeed, that the front of the boat was pointy for a reason. The oddest thing was that by a succession of amazingly lucky events, they didn’t lose the fish. It wasn’t for lack of trying. However, in fairness to the skipper, he did seem quite proficient at driving the boat backwards and when he got bored of that he would drive the boat backwards in circles, just to break the monotony. This would, by some mechanism unknown to me, force the fish to dive deep so that the angler was caused the maximum discomfort while doing slow circles, getting dizzier and more disoriented by the minute. The other idiots obviously felt that this was grand sport and would offer comforting words to the winding idiot and appreciative confirmation to the skipper that his backwards circles were very good, all while they sat around the deck swilling piss.

Eventually, the inevitable happened, with the string parting. You see, idiot stickers make their fishing lines to break. Go figure. This string was made to break with something close to 37kg of load hanging off it. What these cretins don’t realize is that the fish weighs more than 37kg. Like, over 5 times more. Man, those dudes are dumb.

We find a JV again and repeat the pitch-a-hoki routine and this time it’s Matt’s turn on the winding stick and again the hook holds. These guys are real lucky, hooking two fish out of two bites. Their hooks are circular in shape and obviously would never find purchase in the fish’s mouth so to hook two on these freaky circle hooks borders on the unbelievable.

Again the skipper motors backwards and in circles and then a little of the forwards and in circles, seemingly adding to his repertoire by the minute. Eventually the skipper tires of all this driving and the boat sits idle. An hour ticks by.

“Matt, just wind faster”, I offer, but he’s obviously too thick to understand that the quicker he winds the more line he’ll get back.

After an hour and a half the guys get a hand to the thicker bit of string that is close to the fish and haul it up by that (Quite why they don’t fill the whole bobbin with this thick stuff is a mystery to me). It is dead. It has died of boredom. I can sympathize.

We haul it aboard and Matt tries to fornicate with it. Poor simpleton

Next up its Andy’s turn again. We pitch the bait out in a burley trail. It is 10pm. Within 5 minutes a fish has struck which is just as well as I was getting bored again. 11pm passes, then 12, 1, 2, 3 and 4. This clown has been winding for 6 hours. The whole time he is standing up. Maybe he is scared of getting hemorrhoids if he sits down? I dunno. Why else wouldn’t he sit down? 6 fucking hours this gormless twit has winded this fish. He is a powerfully built fellow and oozes steely resolve but the fish obviously does too and the fish is at least smarter as it doesn’t do this for fun. The idiot stickers think this is great stuff until it starts to snow but Andy is too dense to come inside and stays out on the deck of the boat. Then, at 4.30am, we lose the fish boat side. Andy is gutted. You had to feel for the man, simple as he was. He may’ve had the brain of a pigeon but there was no doubting he had the heart of a lion.

We hit the hay at 5am.Scarlett visits me in my slumber.

“Gosh, do my breasts look big in this top?”

“Um, I dunno”

“Well, I guess you couldn’t tell unless you knew what my breasts look like outside of this top?”

“Ummmmm, Errr, Ummm”

“O.K, I’ll take everything off to give you something to compare to”

“Sure”

We get up at 8am.I have picked up a groin strain from somewhere.

With nothing better to do, the idiot stick-ers start a burley trail and make me jump in. I imagine they’re taking bets as to how long I last before a mako gives me a 50% discount. They make me take the underwater camera…..hang on, let me explain. Idiot stickers know a lot about fishing lures. Lures are made to induce fish to bite them. And a lot of lures are fluorescent colours because fish are attracted to fluorescent colours. You see, the camera housing is fluorescent yellow. I’m mincemeat……and I know it.

My sleep deprived and panicked brain conjures tuna out of thin water and then I realize that there really are tuna in the burley trail and I set about filming them. Now the idiots get all excited and jump in too, forgetting in their childlike innocence about the whole shark thing.

Diving with giants…

I guess it would pay to be serious here, as now we’re getting to the bit that most of you would have the keenest interest in. We’d had a bit of a pow wow regarding how to best get footage of these fish and had decided on a decent burley trail, consisting of a couple of fish bins of hoki, which the boys had planned to use as baits but which, due to the ease with which the fishers were hooking these fish, it became abundantly clear we could spare.

Upon first getting in the water the fish were fairly deep, probably at about 10-12m. I took this as a sign that they were reacting negatively to my presence but that theory went rapidly by the wayside as individuals would separate off and ascend at pace to grab a chunk of burley. The others in the school of 6-10 would then follow suit and in their haste to get at the food before their schoolmates would pass, without apparent concern, within 2m of me. Sometimes the fish would charge a piece of burley on a line that meant they were coming straight at me. It was a test of nerves to hold steady and trust the fish to avoid colliding with you. Staring down that big, open gob not 4m from you and still coming on is quite something, I assure you. (Keep in mind these fish would have been somewhere between 200 and 300kg) It soon became apparent that the fish couldn’t give a shit about my being there and even when Matt, then Charlie and Mike, joined me they weren’t in the slightest put off by us. And why should they be? We’d resemble the seals they spend so much time fraternizing with out there on those trawl nets and the fish are so acclimatized to boats and ropes and buoys and all other manner of artificial objects and sounds that the Cascade was just another fixture at the dinner table.

When they weren’t feeding they’d just cruise at about 8-10m where I could get over the top of them so that the distance between us was probably 3m and with me swimming flat out they’d just slowly gain on me.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes…..

So now it’s Matt’s turn again on the winding. He pitches bait and again hooks up. These guys are the luckiest guys in the world! About three hours into the fight, the skipper decides he’s bored too and maneuvers the Cascade, so that now we are directly ahead of a super trawler, though it is still some miles distant. By considerable boatmanship he keeps the boat exactly on the trawlers path so that it inexorably bears down on us. Then it is 200m, no, 100m from us and it is only by the pulling of the fish that we are dragged away from oblivion. The rust red flanks of the ship slide by like great unassailable cliffs towering above us. The idiots guffaw amongst themselves while I change my undies.

The hook snaps after 4.5 hours.

It is 10pm and we must leave the grounds at midnight. With only 2 hours left, neither of the idiot winders are willing to risk hooking up. The deckie, Mike, eventually answers the call to arms and sets me to burleying. Within a couple of minutes, the line begins to tick off the reel occasionally and describe strange patterns upon the glassy oceans surface. Talk about lucky! We have another fish on.

Mikes technique is pretty radical, involving pushing the lever drag to ‘sunset’ (The sun’s already set…..morons) and winding like a crazy man. Within 15 minutes he has the fish boatside. Then these Neanderthals poke a yellow plastic thing in it and cut it free!!!!!!!!!! I’m lost for words. Why the hell would you catch a fish and then cut it free? Please. I felt like the only sane man in the asylum. In disgust I took to my bunk and only awoke when we were safely back in port.

Scarlett wasn’t waiting for me at the wharf. Perhaps there’d been a delay at the airport?


THE END