The famous 'first fish'.
I first visited the Bay of Islands in 1977 on the way back home to the UK after having spent in two years in Papua New Guinea where I first got bitten by the gamefish bug. I had a copy of Goadby's 'Big Fish and Blue Water' which I had read a squillion times. It was my bible and I taught myself what little I knew from it. Going to the Bay was like a Muslim going to Mecca. I arrived in July and was a little nasally dislocated to find out that there were no marlin within a 1000 miles of Russell in July - I thought you tripped over them going to the dairy all year round. No matter, I chartered a boat for a day and went livebaiting for something called a kingfish, listened to a rugby test on the radio (which I thought was a very bizarre thing to do) and caught nothing. I came back and spent a couple of hours in the Swordy Clubrooms in Russell (don't think there were Paihia ones then) absolutely gobsmacked at what I was in the middle of. One day, one day I would be back standing by a blackboard with the light blue surround, a smile as wide as a mile on my face with a dead marlin at my side.
Fast forward twenty two years. I was determined to do this by myself. I was going to catch a marlin from my boat, by my native cunning (or lack thereof). I'm into my fourth season of trying and nix. I'm trolling off Red Head and we get a strike (had those before) but after a short while it is obvious that I have actually hooked a marlin. Now this is the real deal, it is jumping and tail walking and it is seemingly well attached to my line. Where is Tudor Collins when you need him? We fight it from a book and after about 50 minutes we have it at the side of the boat. It is quite quiet but no where near in the terminal stages of anything and I have the flying gaff ready. I am about to pull a marlin into my boat and the light blue edged blackboard of my youth is only forty minutes away. Couldn't do it. Couldn't see the point - then or now. I realised at that moment in time why I wanted to catch a marlin and it had all already happened. I told Paul to put the gaff away, reached over the side, grabbed the bill without gloves (told you it was the first one), took the hook out and felt the feeling I still feel as it swam away.
Perhaps this may explain a bit why I am so against what appears to be happening around our coast at the moment. It just does not fit, in any way shape or form, into the big picture of why I go game fishing. I try and see things from the perspective of the 'kill and grill' brigade, but I can't. That doesn't mean they are wrong, of course, - I just can't see it. I can't even see the 'first fish' thing.
( Written in February 2005)
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