Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1522
It is impossible to watch a bait all the time. Nevertheless, you must almost do that if you expect to see a Marlin or a mako or a broadbill flash up out of the depths. If you see him first you have the advantage. I have often wondered how many fish I fail to see, as they go by. Many and many a one, I know. It is a mistake to imagine that even half of the fish you raise come for the bait, and it takes years of practice to discern them, except those that come close or strike. Raising a fish means drawing it up from the depths somewhere by the use of teasers.
I took a quick glance at bait and teasers and then at the long winding white shoreline, the dark range of mountains, the sea all around, and then my eyes returned. This is a continual process. A good angler should see everything, which is impossible. But particularly he must not miss fins on the surface, dim shapes of gray or green or purple in the swells, birds and their actions, and splashes of fish near or far.
The water of this Australian sea is dark in color, darker, I think, than that of New Zealand, though this seems unreasonable. Flash of the weaving teasers would not show one-tenth so far as in the crystal waters of the South Seas. Fish here could not possibly have the range of vision that they have in tropic seas. We had to find out what teasers worked best and how to manipulate them.
It took two hours to run out to Montague Island, but the time seemed short. Islands always fascinate me. How many lonely lighthouses have I seen! Somehow this one reminded me of Alacrans in the Caribbean Sea. That one was so lonely, so seldom visited, that more than one lighthouse-keeper had gone insane. Montague is a barren rock rising like a hump-backed whale. Tufts of green-yellow grass seem its sole vegetation. But for the most part bare rocks rounded by wind and sea led the gaze to the tower standing on the summit, apprehensively facing the sea. There was an attraction about Montague which I may define later.
For bait we caught small kingfish, or yellowtail, Cereola dorsalis, which is the proper name, and a small mackeral which the boatman called bonito. This species looked more like a skipjack; a bonito has fewer stripes. It was a pretty, shiny fish.
We trolled bait of this kind around the island and then ran out a mile or more. Gulls were few and far between. I sighted one shark fin cutting the water. Outside we ran upon the Tin Hare performing some remarkable evolutions. Emil (Morhardt) had hooked a hammerhead shark and was having his troubles. The shark was heavy and Emil had forgotten to put on the harness. This fact, coupled with the movements of the boat, made him a rather helpless, ludicrous picture. But he was enraptured. In fact they were all excited. They yelled at us, “Whoopee! We’ve got one on!”
I hung around them for a while, watching, and resisting my strong desire to yell, “Stop the boat and fight the fish!”
Presently we raised a hammerhead. This species of shark is probably nearly the same in all waters. But this one had a lighter and more curved dorsal fin, and the way it cut the water, as the big fish came weaving and dashing after us, was something worth photographing. A hammerhead has poor eyesight. He trails his prey by scent, and his peculiar weaving pursuit is wholly due to that. The most remarkable feature about the hammerhead, Squalus zygaena, is the long hammer-like head, on the extreme front of which runs a deep little groove leading to the nostrils at each end, This has been developed to catch more scent in the water. His eyes are also located at each end.
We enticed this fellow to follow the bait. When a second and larger one appeared I had to draw the bait in to keep him from getting it. The savagery of the sea is exemplified in the fierce, swift action of sharks. I hate sharks, and have killed a thousand, and have an inkling that I’ll add another thousand to my list here.
We ran over to watch Emil, who in the meantime had conquered his hammerhead. They hauled it on board. Soon after that we headed back toward Bermagui. I noticed birds working in shore, and running over we found shearwater ducks (mutton birds) and gannet working in a tide-rip where patches of bait showed. A big commotion a mile away looked like a swordfish splash, so we ran down. I often raise and catch swordfish that I sight at a distance. We could not locate this one, however, though we kept trolling around.
Presently the other boat flagged us, and we ran over to find that they had seen an enormous black Marlin rolling around in a patch of bait. We trolled there for an hour without results. Both the Warrens and my men claimed this Marlin was huge, fully sixteen feet long. At least it was the largest these market fishermen had seen.
There was nothing more that happened that day, except a silver pall of rain shrouding the mountains. I called it a good day.
There is always the next day to lure with its possibilities. No two days are alike. The following morning we were out bright and early, trolling the baits we had left from the preceding trip. Hungry swordfish will take anything, but you need a live bait for some of them. Fish that are not hungry at all will rise to follow the teasers, sometimes for miles. These are the aggravating ones. But I have so often teased and provoked one to strike that I generally work with them till they go away.
A big long swell was running, the kind upon which you don’t want the wind to work further. It was clear and sunny, though in the southeast there loomed a cloud I did not like. I had an idea the wind would come, but straightway forgot it.
Four miles out I sighted a long sickle fin cutting through a swell. Did I yell, “Marlin!”? I certainly did. An instant later Peter sighted another farther out, and this tail fin belonged to a large fish. I could not tell whether or not it indicated a black Marlin. It stood up three feet or more, and that much would make a tail spread of over six feet. These Marlin were riding the swells and they were moving fast. The tails would come up out of the top of a swell and cut the water at more than a ten-knot speed. Then they would vanish. It is always necessary to run the boat in the right direction to head the fish off. The Avalon is fast — she can do eighteen knots when opened up — but we could not catch up with the big fellow.
We did, however, show a bait to the smaller Marlin. He saw it flash from over a hundred feet distant. When he swirled with that unmistakable flip of his tail I yelled: “He’s coming, boys. Look out!”
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 constellation, 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.
