Fishing with Rocks and Leaves
Anchored off Christmas Island, Republic of Kiribatii, about 2 degrees north of the equator, I watch with admiration every morning as the local fishermen intrepidly paddle their outrigger canoes out through the surf and off shore to fish. The outrigger canoes they paddle out into to the open ocean are about 12 feet long and no more than 2 feet wide with a single small outrigger. The seat is a board laid across the gunwales. The boats are so small and light, a single man lifts one up to carry it from shore to water. Every day they paddle these small boats with slow measured strokes, out about ½ mile from shore in constant 15 to 20 knot winds and strong currents. There they fish for tuna, mahi mahi and wahoo, sometimes from dawn to dusk.
The water is over 600 feet deep with several knots of current and I have to wonder how they fish for tuna in such deep water. It usually requires some significant gear to get bait down that deep in any kind of current. Now in First World Countries, we would spare no expense in good looking gear to get our bait down where the fish are. We would employ $500 worth of downrigger, wire line, fancy lead weight, and complicated release mechanism, not to mention another several hundred dollars worth of rod and reel to get our line down that deep. And then the boat – I won’t even go there!
My curiosity getting the best of me, I waved a fisherman over on his way out and ask him to stop by and sell me some fish on the way back. He says ok, if he catches any. Later that afternoon he paddled up to the boat. “Mauri” I greet him in his native language. He smiles warmly and responds, “Mauri”. Looking down into his outrigger, I could see three large 20 to 40 pound tuna. There was barely room for his legs. With a shrug of his shoulders, he said that sometimes they catch more, sometimes less. I ask him how much for a tuna. He shrugs his shoulders again, “Whatever you think” he replied. I proffered a $20 bill to start the bargaining. He reached down and picked up the largest tuna. Feeling guilty about taking a 40 pound tuna for 50 cents a pound, I said no, no, that one, pointing to a smaller fish. He shrugs his shoulders once more and agrees on the smaller fish, about a 30 pounder. I asked him if he would show me how they went about fishing for these nice fish.
He was more than happy to demonstrate right there. He pulled out a small bait fish and cut it into about a dozen chunks. He then placed his hook, attached to a 200 pound monofilament line, into one of the chunks of bait. This having been done, he placed a fist sized rock onto a banana leaf, and placed all the chunks of bait, including the one with his hook, on top of the rock. He then carefully wrapped the banana leaf around the rock and bait to make a nice little package, with his line trailing out one corner. This being completed, he took his line leading out of the package and secured the whole thing by winding about five wraps of the line around the folded up leaf, rock and bait. After the last wrap, he made a loop in the line, stuck it back under the wraps and placed a small piece of banana leaf in the loop, pulling carefully to just snug the line around the small piece of leaf and against the wrapped line. Having completed this, it allowed him to gently hold the whole bundle up in the air by his fishing line, the only thing stopping it from coming unraveled was the small piece of banana leaf thru the loop.
The monofilament line is usually attached to a simple spool or stick. At this point, he would carefully lower the bundle into the water a certain number of arm lengths of line. How deep he let it down is a proprietary secret of each fisherman, but usually somewhere between 20 and 50 arm spans across the chest (180’ to 300’ deep), depending on the water and weather conditions. When the bait package got to the depth desired, he would give a sharp tug on the line. The line would cut through the leaf in the loop, and the bundle would then come unwrapped releasing all the bait pieces including the one with his hook. The fish, busily gobbling up the free dinner, would eventually take the one with the hook. The fisherman would play the fish out slowly bringing it up to the boat with the hand line. This was done between the outrigger and the boat, of course, because hauling a large tuna into the boat from the wrong side would capsize the boat. Once next to the boat, he would then stick the fish in just the right spot behind the eye and toward the top of the head, killing it and hauling it into the boat. With this basic technique, these intrepid and ingenious fishermen regularly pull in by hand, tuna up to 60 pounds.
Having shown us this method of fishing, he then picked up the agreed upon tuna, and with a couple of deft strokes, in about 30 seconds he cut a nice fillet off of each side and handed them to me. I gave him the $20 U.S. green back and it was clear that he was more than happy with the denomination and pedigdree of the money. Seeing the only piece of fishing gear we had in common, I grabbed a couple of large hooks and also gave them to him. He seemed more pleased with the hooks than the money. He happily paddled back to shore with the $20 dollars and the hooks, that, amazingly, the foreigner was willing to barter for a mere tuna. It would seem that he would have considered either one a bargain for the tuna.
I took my two large fillets of fish and carried them, like a prize won at the county fair, down into the galley to impress my wife. She listened to my story of how the locals catch fish with rocks and leaves. After I finish my story, she glances out back at my fishing gear stuck in the rod holder “How much did you spend on your rod and reel and tackle box” she asks coyly? Seeing where this is going, I adroitly change the subject by asking if she would like for dinner, sashimi, fresh grilled tuna on the barby with butter and lemon, tuna with teriyaki sauce, or P’oison de Cru (French for raw fish marinated in coconut oil – quite excellent by the way)? “Quite an international epicurean these days, aren’t we”? She says, letting me get away with the side step this time. “Let’s go with sashimi”, she decides, “Less chance of ending up with some of your barbeque sauce on it”.