Gone Fishin'

The first time I went fishing was when I was twelve years old. My uncle was a crusty old seafarer who skippered an ancient rust bucket out of Duncannon on Ireland’s sunny south east coast. Back in the days when Ireland had long hot summers my parents used to rent a caravan there every July. The kids were piled into the car and we’d join the long procession south, towards our Mediterranean.

In hindsight, I think my parents only went there for the free fish that my uncle brought round each evening. But to us kids, it was an adventure playground. The old fort that was built by the British to defend against Napoleon was there to be broken into, the sand dunes allowed us to recreate Rommel’s North African campaign and to a child’s eye; the sea was a tempting wonderland of fishing boats and cargo ships inching their way towards Waterford Port.

I nagged my uncle for a week until he agreed to let me come for a day’s fishing on his trawler. I rose at 4am and crept out of the caravan like a cat burglar and made my way through the darkness to the little pier on the edge of town. Everything was quiet apart from the slow lapping of the in-coming tide. I stepped aboard for my first sea adventure while my uncle and his mates packed what to me looked like a mountain of food into the boat’s galley.

Soon the big dirty diesel engines were started and we were on our way. I stood up front for the first few miles as we sailed down the channel, imagining myself as a Jason leading the Argonauts to battle. Then we rounded Hook Head and entered the open sea. Everything changed and my sea legs were suddenly tested.

Within ten minutes I was consigning the cornflakes I’d hastily consumed that morning to a watery grave. I wobbled around the deck for a few hours merrily throwing up everything I’d eaten over the previous six months, right back to the egg, beans and chips that my Mother had bought me for my confirmation dinner.

My uncle thought an hour or two in the bunks downstairs might sort me out. As I descended the stairs into the sleeping quarters, my nose was suddenly filled with the pungent aroma of diesel fumes coming from one end of the boat and the whiff of dead fish coming from the other. This and the dizzying motion did nothing for my delicate stomach. So I wandered back upstairs and found to my amazement that when you don’t have anything left to throw up, you finally find your feet.

The only problem was my uncle doubled as chef on the boat and insisted on feeding me boiled bacon and potatoes every hour or so. Trawling is incredibly hard work and fishermen eat more than trailer park Americans. They kept telling me that I’d get used to it and to be honest by the end of the day I could hold down food for up to twenty minutes.

When I was delivered back to the safety of the campsite, my dad kindly laid me on the best bunk and gently mocked my predicament. In my head, the caravan didn’t stop swaying for the next three days.

Needless to say I’ve been reluctant to head to sea since, so it was with some trepidation that I accepted an offer over Christmas to go on a little fishing trip into the lovely bay of Pauanui on New Zealand’s Coromandel Coast. I needn’t have worried however as the sea was as flat as a supermodel’s chest and we skipped across the surf with a barely a wobble. Ross was in charge and he showed delicate consideration for my naivety. I was excused responsibility for attaching the disgusting bait to the fishing lines or for washing the blood from previous kills from the boat’s deck. Ross even cast my line into the glistening sea which meant all I had to do was sit there and hold a fishing rod until something in the murky depths was foolish enough to have a nibble.

Thankfully this didn’t happen too often as I like eating animals a lot more than killing them. I dabbled with Vegetarianism for a couple of years but went back to being a carnivore when I had a Paulian revelation one night over a lentil curry. God spoke to me and said “If I didn’t want you to eat animals, why did I make them out of meat?”

Nevertheless, I have kept a slight squeamishness when it comes to seeing my upcoming meal in a live state. I like to think of fish for example as being rectangular shaped and covered in batter. Not with sad eyes staring at you and a gaping mouth that seems to be saying “I only wanted a bloody nibble”.

It soon became evident however, that there is a skill to fishing which had totally bypassed me. While I stood impotently dangling my rod into the deep dark sea, my colleagues were hauling fish into the boat with the industry of a Japanese whaling fleet. Snapper, Leatherbacks and scary looking eels were caught, measured and thrown back in if they didn’t meet the lofty standards of the skipper.

Finally I bored some fish into submission and was able to land a couple of small Snapper for my portfolio. One was thrown back and the other was smacked on the head (a process I averted my eyes for) and added to the trophy bucket. Alas I later found out that he had made his way into a curry we ate, which thwarted my plans to have him mounted on a plaque.

We made it back to land by the light of a shimmering moon. We did all the manly things about getting the boat out of the water and onto the trailer (at this stage I was a seasoned sea-farer) and arrived home like knights returning from the crusades.

I insisted on having a picture taken of me holding the 7 kilo snapper that Ross had caught. Fishing is meditative, companion making, relaxing and somewhat spiritual. But the best part is the chance to have your photo taken with big dead fish.