The Fishing Trip That Changed My Life Forever

The Fishing Trip

That Changed My Life

Forever

By

Matthew Hooper

This is a fishing story so it won't be short. Last year myself and five mates decided to go on a fishing holiday to Tasmania. Once there the plan was to charter a boat that would hopefully see us enjoy the wonders of the open ocean. We did as much at a local marina in the port city of Hobart. Our boat was named the Mac Coy. An apt name for something that looked the real deal.

It was a dark day and I hated the sea. I didn't know about fishing, I didn't care about fishing. For me fishing was what I did as a teen at a night club. For this IT manager the ocean was a deep and scary place, so the fish that inhabited this world were welcome to it. I knew so little about fishing that sometimes I needed to think whether I was eating fish or chicken at dinner. I had never actually had the opportunity to handle a fish at all. I was completely ignorant of the marine world.

From the time I saw the ocean that day I was sea sick. By the time we left the heads, I was sicker. By the time we had reached our position off shore where the undersea mountains dropped into the abyss, where I thought even fish would drown, I was yellow-green.

I was propped up against the cabin entry wanting to die by this time. The swell was five meters at a glance and the wind was gale force three.

My mates were fishing before they had their third beer, they loved it. A drum of blood and guts was being chummed faster than the snack food being consumed. I hated this!

So after a couple of hours of doing nothing but sway from side to side I was eventually handed an object. It was a rod and reel. I didn't want to fish! My senses were being assaulted and my mates ribbing me about being the odd sailor out was adding to the nausea. I just stood there hoping an albatross would fly by and I could snare a ride home.

Then a kindly gentleman, our captain for this mayday from hell, popped up to say “Good day!”

“Want to have a fish mate? Get ya mind off the old stomach... ay... give it a go?” The captain tried to be cheerful, but I knew deep down he wanted to punch me in the lower ribs, whip me with a yard of rope and tell me to grow the hell up.

“Ok, OK, just throw whatever over and I'll do whatever,” I totally dismissed his keenness. I was so sick that even if the sea god Poseidon came up to grab the bait I wouldn't have given a stuff about it. I then smartly remarked, “I don’t give a shit if bloody Moby Dick jumps on the end of the dam line...mate!

The captain grinned or smirked I wasn’t sure. He then meekly said, “You will.”

With that he opened a cooler box on the starboard side. Using both hands he clawed his fingers under the gills of a massive fish before hauling it out onto deck. I was in two minds at this moment. I was hoping that I must have been so anaemic that the captain had a change of heart and was going to suggest some secret raw fish meal to ease my sea sickness. I then pre-empted the invitation that was never going to come, until later that was. “I don’t feel like lunch” I said, with a lump coming up my gullet. I'd never seen a fish so big. All I could do was cough out a laugh and wise crack to my fellow seafarers, “Look, we have lunch ordered already!”

While the captain had hold of this “animal” a ship hand came over after rigging a line of one of my friends, who wasn’t catching anything other than the propeller. He had a gigantic hook in his hand that would be more at home in some urban myth horror movie. One that sees a maniac kill everyone at Sea World. At that moment I wished a pod of dolphins would come and rescue me. That half myth, half truth of the sea was as much as I knew or hoped for at the moment. This hook had wire attached, and the ship hand was wearing gloves you would find on a welder at a ford factory. I yelled inside. “Where the hell am I?!”

The ship hand then ploughed the hook through the back bone of this fish then delicately sewed the bent spear into position. One of my friends yelled “That’s a suburb Spanish Mackerel.” It was a fish unlike anything I'd ever seen before. My first instinct was to think surely this creature has to be protected by some sort of law? “What the hell!!!!” I gasped out. “What the hell in gods name are we fishing for?”

The ship hand simply said, “We don’t muck around down here mate,” he smirked then rolled his eyes at his captain.

It then took the two men all their energy they could muster to lug this fish, that would feed a family for weeks, to the back of the boat. Here they unceremoniously yelled one, two, three and threw, or more precisely dropped, the fish into the ocean. The swell that was eating the inside of my stomach took the bait into the dark deaths where even coffins had no rest. Even then I still didn't bother or care about what this devilish apparatus was that I had lodged in my hands, or why the devil my friends were enjoying catching jack nothing with theirs. Maybe they didn't care because of their beer consumption, I just don’t know?

Being the “smart” one that day I thought wearing thongs would escape the annoyance of wet socks; like the others were suffering from at the moment. I'd discarded the “supplied” yellow gumboots, which were now sitting in the cabin bellow. Even though my feet were cold, I was at least comfortable... I thought. I stared up into the sky hoping the grey clouds might distract me from the churning sea, but stuff me I was hit in the eyes by the rain drops from hell. Luckily most were going side ways in the gale so it could have been worse...I suppose. That was until I vomited. I unleashed a cascade of breakfast down my front. I couldn't take my hands away from the rod and reel to gain some dignity because everyone thought this sight was fantastic. My friends roared with laughter. Then out came the iPhone's to snap the happy occasion. It was after all a fun moment with your buddies, who would really want to help, so I couldn’t blame them?

Then lightening hit me, not the electrical stuff, but life.

My existence changed forever in the next couple of hours, in a prophetic way, a deeper more meaningful fashion that would open my eyes to the world around me. It made me think about why people care so much about the environment. Poseidon came to teach me a lesson.

In an instant I remember moving.

I went from wearing thongs to bare feet in a few milliseconds. I was lost for traction sliding across the deck as if I was skiing on an inland waterway. The only thing I had the sense to do in those couple of seconds was to curl up the old toes. Those knuckles, which were already blue from the southern ocean, hit the back board of the boat with an almighty crunch. At the same time the ship hand and the captain chased me. My two life savers grabbed me before I fell over board. One of the men flipped a gear on the reel freeing the tension from what ever had taken on that bait. As the captain pulled me back towards the chair a young deck hand quickly harnessed me into something who would climb the North face of the Matterhorn with. In a busy ten seconds I was fitted, sat and armed to do battle. I said to my self “MY GOD!”. It was the first time I had really taken a look at the gear given to me to fight this monster, whatever it was? The reel was bigger then the winch on my 4WD, and the rod at the base was as thick as my ten year olds lower arm. “Hell!” I thought, this is it. I've got a front road seat to one of man’s greatest adventures.

It was not until the crew had backed away that I noticed the noise. My toes were still curled and even if they were bloody or worst broken I didn't care any more. The reel screamed like a rocket engine. The line was being stripped off this winch as if it had been attached to a drag car.

The boys gathered in their lines and the iphones came out... again. Game on. Their shouts for a glorious ocean battle surged me on. Even the beer stopped flowing. Eight men were going to sit back to watch a sea sick guy that was as ill as a dog take on one of the oceans greatest predators. The Tuna!

The captain of the day then yelled, “It has no desire to end up on this boat mate! It will take you to the brink physically.” He flicked something on my reel and yelled “PULL!”.

The rod buckled and the first hit of pressure was in my abdomen. I vomited again. The iphones clicked away. The only silent ones were now taking video of the grand experience. The boat moved in reverse. A 75 foot monster that I was at least feeling safe on was being physically manoeuvred by an untamed beast of the sea. This thing couldn't be reasoned with or negotiated with. All it wanted was its freedom and was going to fight to the death to gain it.

One minute of pulling and reeling turned quickly into two. Then after ten I had nothing left in the stomach, my whole body in fact. If I had seen my lower intestine being chomped on by seagulls in the choppy current off the stern I wouldn't have been surprised. After thirty minutes I couldn’t feel anything below my waist and at the forty five minute mark I think every muscle had been detached from my back bone. At the hour mark I had aged ten years and my arms had been permanently damaged. I'm not lying, to this day I still go to the chiropractor to get the stress kneaded out. During all this time the boat was at the mercy of a gallant opponent that was unequal in fighting ferocity.

Then the sentinel of the sea decided to leave the ocean. Like a missile being launched from a submarine this tuna exploded into the southern gale that was whipping the ocean surface. The grand Pisces sailed into the sky treating the air as just another medium for it to swim through. Opening its fins this giant perfectly formed marauder of the ocean displayed its colourful silver, blue and yellow. After an eternity, when the line sprang up out of the water in a parabolic snap, the tuna folded its self into a bullet shape before piecing the water.

The fight lasted until the captain and ship hand grapple-hooked the tuna after an hour and a half. It took four men to slide this monstrous fish onto the deck. I looked at my catch dying for a few minutes before the ship hand hit it with an axe. I was horrified at seeing this. The spasms of this aquatic gem shocked me. In my exhausted state I wish my stomach had been filled so I could have vomited over the scene. Instead the undignified death of such a wild and free fish scrawled itself into my mind. I would never forget it. There was no glory in this, nothing at all.

Well, the boat journey back was just as bad. My mind was numb. I felt the whole episode distasteful; with the rocking of the boat settling my sediment of gloominess. If one of my friends congratulated me with a pat on the back one more time I swear I could have hit them. Once ashore I was still sick. So having tunnel vision in gaining some medicine for the stomach and a shower I hurriedly left the others. I was stricken with ocean-exposure after all so they understood. I staggered away not wanting to see any more.

Then the captain yelled out to me.“Want ya fish!?”

I spun around and without a pause stormed back toward the boat determined to tell the captain what I thought he could do with the catch. On the way there I saw a group of Japanese disembarking from another charter boat, obviously empty handed. I went up to the captain and said, “Mate, I'm in a hotel room with a bar fridge!” I pointed to the now dull eyed creature that was now frozen in death. “Where the hell am I going to store that bloody thing!” I then pointed to the little group of Japanese and barked, “Give the dam thing to them!” I then walked off hoping a tsunami would wipe out all the fishing fleets of the world...sort of. I was just mad at the time. The last thing I remember was seeing a dozen or so Japanese rejoicing as they carried this tuna along the pier. Even the women had blood and muck all over them.

The joys of fishing I thought? At least a lot of people would enjoy sushi over the next few months.

* * *

These are the facts my wife showed me on her iPad when my weary body was aching in bed three nights later. The Blue Fin tuna is one of the largest warm blooded bony fish in the world. Its hydrodynamic shape can grow to over 2.5 meters and weigh more than 260 kilograms. Some species grow to the weight of a horse. That fishing day I had a two hundred and sixty kilo plus ocean bullet the length of my wife’s Honda on the end of that line. The tuna's stream line body is deepest near its dorsal fin. As this body tappers towards the snout you will find eyes set flush with its body to limit resistance. These optical wonders have the sharpest vision of any bony fish, those of an eagle. The lower part of its body is silver white with a dusty yellow anal fin. The crescent shaped tail is only surpassed by a dorsal fin of brilliant yellow-blue. These fins can retract to reduce drag helping it reach velocities of near eighty kilometres an hour or faster. This spectacular fish can turn on a dime and maintain that speed. Whether left, right, up or down it is unmatchable to almost any other marine species in agility. This fish can dive to a depth of three kilometres. Its appetite is basically anything that swims, lays on the ocean bed or tries to leave the ocean to escape it. And through all this activity the tuna maintains a heart rate over 200 beats a minute. If it is not living in the fast lane the tuna will suffocate from a lack of oxygen over its gills. It can live for over 40 years, a non stop bullet of the oceans, a master of the seas that never stops swimming.

The scientific name for one of these tuna species is the Thunnus maccoyii. That made me chuckle; the Mac Coy. A boat ride into the ocean I will never forget or regret. I felt the experience made me grow, it changed me forever, I was educated, I am now an eco-thinker. I will never kill a creature as majestic and noble as that again. Now that I have witnessed a tuna preform aquatic magic I am now hooked on teaching others on how to protect them. It saddens me to see tuna stripped mercilessly from the sea. Without these creatures the sea will die, over 90% are now wiped out already. How long will it be before we say that the fauna of the ocean should be allocated the same rights as the animals of the land?

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