The trap shut. No noise, just the frigid,
silent dreadful realisation that there was no way out. Worse still
I realised that I set the trap myself, and barged right into it.
My own trap, set by my own big mouth. How I wished that it had
been my trap that remained shut a few short hours earlier.
Setting up my own pit and pendulum hell-hole had
been an innocent enough exercise.
Our summer holiday paradise was a perfect piece
of Northland coast hideaway, that had firmly resisted the invading
tide of ‘development’. The road in, enough to put off most, but
the truly adventurous.
One holiday we fished most nights over the previous
week at spot ‘X’ regularly catching a feed, and releasing more.
This particular Spot ‘X’ is a magic place. We launch
the tiny tinny off the beach, and motor out past two white sand
lined, uninhabited beaches, and then two or three cliff protected
deep coves, to a point that juts perhaps half a kilometre out
to sea.
Halfway along the point there is an area of shallowish
foul ground rising rapidly from 40 to 50 meters. The foul sits
smack in the middle of a good current that sweeps along the beaches,
and out to the point. Classic, almost definitive, snapper territory.
The spot is within 200 metres of the steep rock
shore. More that close enough to get some real delight from the
native bush and birds that cover the steep, almost cliff, slopes
above the rocks.
Usually we headed out not too far before dark. As
the sun set behind us, the twisted shapes of the Pohutakawa trees on the
cliff tops, silhouette themselves starkly against the reddening
sky.
The plot had become almost routine. Motor out to
the spot, drop the anchor up-current of the foul ground patch,
and set up the burly trail. Rig a pillie fore and aft, with a
couple of 5/0 hooks, then float it down the burly trail to tempt
the fish that waited below.
There was usually very little wait. The bait would
move off slowly, then with the bait gulped firmly into its mouth,
the snapper would drop down a cog or two, and bolt back towards
home.
Some lunging and bumping from the fish, some drop
and wind from the angler, and the fish would come to the boat.
An hour, or not much more, would see us on the way home with enough
fish for dinner.
Some sort of a routine, sure, but boring, no way.
The therapeutic value of just being there usually proved enough,
for a grid-locked city mind.
Perhaps that is why the trap was set and triggered
so easily.
Some friends had turned up that afternoon, drawn
by our descriptions and photos. They arrived tired, very dusty,
but bearing steaks for the barbie.
"No steaks, tonight", said I, "a
feed of fresh snapper, is on the way".
There it was, the trap, laid out, set, and ready
for springing.
We tried. Boy, oh, boy, did we try. We built the
biggest ground-bait trail in the history of fishing. Not even
the normally prolific Blue Mao-Mao showed up. We moved the boat.
We changed baits. We drifted over the reef with baits and jigs.
Nothing! Not even a Spotty. Naught, nil, zero, zilch, and plenty
of it.
The trip home that evening, just as the first stars
burst out of the black blue sky was a long one. Normally I am
enthralled by the sudden white gleam of foam breaking on the beaches
and rocks, out of the growing darkness, but not tonight. No colour
broke the blackness of my mood.
Worse was to come. Our guests lined up on the beach,
waiting for the Great White Hunter and the Boy Wonder to land
and unload the catch. There was no escape from the tirade of insult
we endured.
There was still more to come, all bad. I was not
even allowed to burn the dead animal on the barbecue, in case,
"I screwed that up as well". As we ate the steaks I
suffered the endless strings of comments, all on the same sarcasm
laden theme, "isn’t a feed a fresh fish just the greatest
taste on the planet".
If you had sat my fishing reputation on a piece
of tissue paper, its legs would not have dangled.
It certainly did not help that the spot regularly
produced fish, after my guests left.
Promising to bring home a feed of fish is the absolute
kiss of death to any chance of catching anything but a large heap
of derision.
Scientists may scoff that my evidence is at best
anecdotal, but I stand convinced that fish can hear promises about
themselves ending up lightly floured, dropped into a hot frypan,
and then into a human’s digestive tract.
It is a proven fact that sound travels marvellously
well through water. The human voice charged with the full resonant
force of bloated self assurance, carries even further. Undue fervent
confidence rolls the promising voice into unique sonic wave patterns
that first permeate the air around the boaster, and then dive
into the water, to travel rapidly and accurately to every fish
in the foreseeable vicinity.
My evidence is not just the rambling of an aging
mind. It comes with the lucid clarity borne from many, too many,
pieces of hindsight, and abject failures to perform as predicted.
Once I was standing close to our garden pond, which
is about the size of a 6 or 8 close friends spa pool, which contained
80 or more goldfish. Most were in plain view. I started to utter
the words, to my friends standing nearby, "would you like
a feed of fish, I am going out tomorrow…". I stopped in
mid-sentence, my attention riveted by the fact that every goldfish
had disappeared. All had dived for cover.
Even a sprinkling of fish food that could usually
be guaranteed to send the fish into a surface boiling feeding
frenzy, could not entice them out from under the dense weed cover.
Down in the dark dank depths, they sulked through the rest of
that day, and the next.
Now you may think that was a one-off coincidence,
but you would be wrong.
I tested the theory further. A week or two later,
I stood by the pond, teeming with visible fish, and out loud made
a promise to catch fish. Not one fish deviated from whatever was
its particular course of that moment. You see, no matter how well
I acted, the lack of the power of genuine unabashed stupidity,
could not force the unmeant promise through the water.
There is more evidence. On returning from yet another
promised, but inevitably fishless trip, I sulked away from the
jeering mob, down to the pond. Through the misty haze of my frustration
filled eyes, I noticed nothing. Not a goldfish in sight.
If you do not have a fish pond lurking close to
your person, make a fish feed promise near your wife. It is possible
wives are even more perceptive than fish to the nuances of the
particularly silly sound waves these predictions make. The instant
the promise leaves your mouth, their eyes roll slightly back,
and their mouths squeeze into that weaned on a gherkin look. Their
hands seem to operate with a will of their own, reaching instantly
for the freezer door, to start unfreezing something for dinner.
It is probable, but more research is needed, that
the opening of freezer doors by wives as you leave on a fish feed
promise trip, actually acts as some kind of amplifier for the
promise, enhancing its transmission to fish.
There is still some work to be done on this theory,
but an interim conclusion can be drawn. Fishermen, (and it is
by the way a peculiar, and particularly fisherMAN phenomena),
should, never, never promise a feed of fish to anyone, ever.
Carl Yung, (1875-1961), the Swiss Psychiatrist,
summed it up well:
‘The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil
nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using
evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already
on the road to perdition’.
A truly perceptive, but wordy quotation. What Yung,
had he been a fisherman, could have more simply said, was that
promising a feed of fish, is the first step on the way to fishing
hell.