For three or more days, every twist, every move,
echoed the twisting turning pattern of the rest of the school.
The school numbered countless thousands of three to four inch
herring like fish. Each fish turning and twisting, presented to
predators a swirling cohesive mass. Conformity was all. The slightest
difference in maintaining the pattern, made the one stand out
in stark contrast to the rest. That one slow movement enough for
a predator to single out it’s quarry, and strike
The nerve receptors along each fishes side could
feel the presence of the three to four pound kahawai,
that constantly patrolled the edges of the school.
They were trapped. Snared by the need to move into
the warmer water near the beach to scatter their eggs in the cover
of sand, silt and bubbles, of the surf, and the kahawai.
The water was becoming more shallow. The taste became
more metallic, less salty. It was harder to maintain buoyancy,
as the fresh water from the river mouth they were approaching,
mixed with the sea. The closer they moved to the river mouth the
more the current pushed at them.
As the water shallowed to less than thirty feet,
the school was forced to spread out more horizontally. Now the
kahawai moved below, forcing the school closer to the surface.
The closer the school moved towards the bar that crossed the river
mouth, the more confused became the messages from the receptors.
The surf breaking on the bar deadened the clearer signals of predator
and prey.
As the school spread out kahawai began to slash
through in random attacks. This began to break the school into
smaller schools, each pushed into a ball below the surface.
Now the feeding frenzy could begin in earnest.
Kahawai attacked from the sides, and from below
each school. The swirling patterns of protection frayed and broke
down. Some fish in their frantic efforts to escape broke the surface
of the water. The terns and seagulls swooped. Gannets, diving
from thirty or more feet, smashed into the school.
Some of the schools raced into the breaking surf
to try and escape, and spread their eggs. The aerated water did
not have enough buoyancy for their small bulk. They became easy
prey for the kahawai.
The frenzy would continue, until the remnants of
the school could escape in small groups, back to the deeper water.
For two days prior to this carnage the boy walked
the sand dunes, watching the approach of the dark shadow out to
sea that hinted at the school beneath. At thirteen he had already
watched the scene many times, fingers itching for the feel of
a rod in his hands.
Now he slowly strolled along the edge of the water,
moving toward the river mouth, a mile or so away. His rod of Rangoon
cane, thirteen feet long, swung easily at his side.
The school was now a very dark shadow just under
the surface, but still just out of casting range. The birds hovered
above ready to pounce on any fish that moved too close to the
surface. He continued to move slowly. There was no need to hurry.
The time, would be time, soon enough. Living at a beach, near
a river mouth, taught him the impotence of impatience at events
moving at nature’s pace.
He reached the river mouth at the same time as the
school.
Slowly, and carefully he waded waist deep out and
along the hook of the bar that jutted out at right angles to the
beach across river mouth.
With the easy graceful power of youth he swung the
rod in an arc over his shoulder, stopping the rod with a punch.
The new, prized birthday present, a hexagonal cut, chromed lure,
flashed across the water, and smashed into the sea on the far
side of the mayhem that was now the nearest school.
He paused for a few minutes to allow the line to
sink, and then began a slow, irregular retrieve. Twice the lure
returned to the rod tip, unsullied. For a third time he cast,
and began the retrieve.
The kahawai was around three kilos. Strong, but
frantic. All around his kin were darting and diving at the bait
fish that strayed from the pattern set by its neighbours. He had
yet to feed. At last one bait fish made a turn too slow, standing
it out in stark relief to the ball of the school. A sharp flick
of the tail and the kahawai darted toward its prey.
A flash of silver darting across its vision distracted
the kahawai, and perhaps in annoyance, maybe in hunger, it struck
at the flashing intruder.
The sharp prick in its lower jaw did not immediately
alarm the kahawai. The spines and scales of thousands of previous
meals had pricked him many times before. But the sudden unseen
pressure pulling his head around, was instantly alarming. The
alarm quickly turned to panic. He raced for the surface, bolting
into the air, in a genes driven rush to escape.
The boy felt the line come tight and then race off
against the drag. He watched as the fish, the biggest kahawai
he had had on a line, charged out of the sea, once, again, and
yet again, shaking it’s head, trying to rid itself of the lure.
Then he settled into his well-practiced pump and wind routine,
all the time moving slowly and carefully back toward the beach,
from the bar.
The kahawai felt it before he saw it. Even in its
frantic effort to escape the relentless pressure pulling it toward
the beach, his receptors could feel the long slow pressure waves
emitted from the regular sinuous movements of a very big fish.
The boy felt too, before he saw. The kahawai made
a sudden a sustained near surface run. He had caught maybe a hundred
kahawai before, but this run at the closing stages of the fight,
was very unusual. Then he saw it, the dark blue triangle, pushing
up a rooster tail as it raced through the water.
Then he saw more. The off-shore wind was pushing
back the swell into thin pre-break waves, made translucent by
the low setting sun. Through this clear backdrop he could clearly
see the whole of the shark in stark silhouette.
His fascination with the sight of his first shark,
turned to horror when he saw his kahawai racing ahead of the shark
in the same wave.
The dark shapes of kahawai and shark moved closer
together on the cinema screen that was the wave. The drama then
played out in the slow motion clarity of view that seems to prelude
disaster.
With one final lunge of its tail, the shark swept
onto the kahawai, and in the eye of the splash turned out of the
wave, and headed back to deeper water.
The boy watched as the fin arced toward the deep,
and his rod tip arced to follow the fin as line raced from his
reel.
The shark felt the pressure from the line, and slightly
alarmed surged at full speed at an angle to its previous path
out to deeper water. The line pulled across its teeth, and the
pressure disappeared. Alarm gone, with the loss of pressure, the
shark moved leisurely back toward the schools.
"You bastard," screamed the boy at the
fin, as he reeled in the now slack line, "that was my fish,
my bloody lure." The fin did not move one inch from its course,
at this boys lament.
That, ‘little fish get eaten by bigger fish, who
get eaten by bigger fish, who get eaten…..,’ was a hard learned
lesson, but then lessons learned hard, and young, are the lessons
learned best. Young learned lessons can drive and fuel a lifetime
of learning fishing. It did mine. Can’t think of better reason
to take a kid fishin’.
For overseas readers: a kahawai
is a saltwater fish, in appearance somewhat similar to a USA sea
trout, although it is no relation. To make ID worse the Australians
call the fish "salmon". It grows to about 3Kg but much
bigger specimens have been caught, up to 8Kg in fact.