Growing Up In New Zealand 1925-1950
Part 10 - Nowhere Far From The Sea
Four Fishermen - 19/01/01
You can read the previous part in the Growing up in New Zealand 1925 - 1950 series
here, or read the articles from the original Growing Up in
New Zealand series.
As Basil Dowling said in one of his poems, wherever you are in New Zealand
you are 'nowhere far from the sea'. Spending time in boats and fishing
from the wharf or the shore have always been popular pastimes for New
Zealanders. For most growing up between 1925 and 1950 the boats were not
elaborate or expensive. The most popular was the clinker-built dinghy.
This type of boat is made of wooden planks each of which is laid to overlap
the one below forming a series of longitudinal ledges.
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Clinker-Built Dinghies
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Four people shared their memories of fishing...
Warwick went fishing near Auckland
The older I get, the more I appreciate having been born and grown up in New
Zealand. We were truly privileged. A child doesn't worry about
sophisticated lifestyles, which appeal to some adults. As a boy, apart
from the usual games, I enjoyed so much those things which nature had to
offer. The countryside was a trampers ideal, with no worries of snake,
spiders, wild animals or other characters of that ilk. We could tramp all
day, then pick a nice spot to roll out the sleeping bag, light a fire to
fry a steak and to boil some veges and a billy for tea. I can still recall
places I have camped in years ago. One in particular was on the top of Mt.
Pihanga at the southern end of Lake Taupo. We woke to a calm and crisp
morning with a light frost on our sleeping bags, below a beautiful blue sky
with wisps of cloud streaking above the lake, which lay as a blue sea below
us. We lay for a while before starting breakfast, warm in our bags,
savouring the view and at the same time listening to the donging
reverberations of a bellbird calling his good-morning song. Memories like
that never fade away.
The land offered us many such beauties, but the sea surrounding the land
had formed an equally beautiful coastline with many magnificent beaches and
its waters were full of fish. Even though the population of the whole
country is still very small, more and more of our beaches are becoming
overpopulated. Some of my happiest days were spent in a small boat
patiently fishing for those plentiful fish. My old friend Ron, who was
like a second father to me, had a beach house - a bach, as we called all
beach houses in those days. It was built on the beach which formed a
boundary of a farm owned by a friend of his. The farmer's family had
worked the dairy farm for several generations, but now, sadly, it has gone
to 'development' and is now subdivided. The beach front on which Ron's
bach was the only building, is now covered in beach houses, pushing side by
side against the next door neighbour.
Once again I am thankful for my memories. In those days I was just one of
those beach seagulls, which scoured the beach at low tide. The tide would
go out a long way and when out would then show where the schnapper had made
their holes 'digging' for shall fish. So when the tide was in I would take
a net and drag through the water for 'sprats' which we used for bait to
catch larger fish. I would also row the dinghy out to set the net off the
point to catch mullet or other fish cruising the coastline or I would just
row out in the dinghy to fish with a hand line.
The dinghy was a small boat and could be anything from 6 feet to 12 feet in
length. They were most commonly Clinker-built but were sometimes
Carvill-built, which was very strong but much heavier. The Clinker boat
was made by overlapping lengths of timber about 4 to 6 inches wide and
about half an inch thick, which were all nailed to a frame of ribs using
copper nails. The Carvil construction used carefully shaped lengths of
timber about 1 inch by 1 inch and these were butted against each other,
giving a smooth outer skin. Later on, when marine plywood became
available, this offered a fast and alternative method of boat construction,
but it lacked that elegance of a clinker!
The clinker boat I used was light and very manoeuvrable. It had three
seats and two sets of rowlock blocks. You selected which position to use
according to the passenger list and the amount of the load in the boat.
Unlike canoes you row a dinghy with your back facing the direction in which
you are moving, with an oar in each hand. It was always easy to identify
an experienced oarsman by their long steady pull on the oars and the
uncanny ability to row in a direct line which contrasted with the splashes
and erratic movement, in all directions, of the novice. But there was no
other way to get there in those days and it certainly was good exercise
even if the hands and buttocks became blistered in the process. It did
take time, however, and when the first small 'Seagull' outboard engines
arrived, with only 2 horsepower capacity to push them along,
I must admit to a certain envy at their speed in comparison to my 1
manpower capacity.
We would row out about a mile or more from the beach until we reached the spot,
located by lining up such features as island or shore features, and
then we would get out the hand lines and we would fish. And I do mean
fish. We caught so many fish that we would share with all of our
neighbours and it didn't matter at all that it might have taken us an hour
or more to row out and an equal time to return. We could spare the time
and still have an abundant catch.
But for me, rowing has one prime feature which an engine can never replace.
It is QUIET! All the way out and all the way back, the only sounds to be
hears, apart from our conversation, were the chunk/thunk of the oars in the
rowlocks and the creaming and splashing of the water as the boat moved
along. It was peaceful to me, and is far more pleasant than that eternal
engine noise which suppresses all other sound and even makes conversation
difficult. Then there is one other thing that you cannot do if you have an
outboard engine or a propeller whizzing around under the stern - and that
is to set a net from the stern of a dinghy.
There was a river mouth near to the beach and we would often row up the
river and set a net off one of the mangrove heads, partially blocking the
tributary. Then we would come down behind the net, making a noise and
splashing the water to move the flounder. Once again a marvellous memory
of those days !! In one such catch we pulled in 82 flounder in the net
over the stern. Once again the neighbourhood was well supplied. It was a
long haul to get back home that night but I didn't even mind
the blisters.
For Warwick's more recent experiences at sea, read 'Cruising, Fishing,
Diving in Dusky Sound'
Peter recalls fishing near Nelson
"Would you like to go fishing at Cable Bay this weekend?" Dad asked. My
brother and I naturally jumped at the suggestion.
"Can we take Jim?" I asked and it was agreed that my good friend Jim could
come too.
Cable Bay
Cable Bay which is about thirty kilometres out of Nelson has a place in our
family's mythology. Dad had started his working life there about 1905 by
joining the 'Eastern Extension Cable Co', later to become 'Cables and
Wireless'. In those days an overseas cable came ashore there - hence the
name - and there was quite a staff at the station. Local boys had a great
opportunity to see the world if they joined the company. At that time it
was relatively isolated and recreation had to be found nearby. There were
tennis courts - and there was the SEA. Dad used both, but fishing had the
added benefit of providing a change of diet, so all the staff there became
very knowledgeable about where and how to catch fish.
Fishing trips require preparation, so we started by checking the gear -
first the dinghy, a 12 foot clinker built craft, and trailer, then the oars
and rowlocks, bailer, fishing lines, bait, anchor and ropes, suitable
footwear, and sacks to sit on and to enclose any fish we caught. No life
jackets then, so we had to be extra careful, but we could all swim.
On the day Dad set the alarm for about 4.30 am and we were not enthusiastic
about tumbling out of bed at that hour, but he had tea and toast ready for
us. Like all fishermen Dad had his theories about the best time to fish.
His was that the best time was at low tide when this occurred early in the
morning.
By the time we arrived at the Bay it was daylight and the sun was coming
up. The water was quite calm and the sky was blue. Impatiently we
unloaded and launched the boat, parked the car and trailer, loaded the gear
aboard and pushed off.
Two of us boys rowed with Dad indicating where to head - "Row left" or "Row
right" etc. When we reached the end of the Rocky Point off Pepin Island to
the east of Cable Bay Dad manoeuvred us to a likely location and we dropped
anchor.
Once the boat had settled we shipped the oars, got out our lines, baited
the hooks and dropped them over the gunwale. Almost immediately we started
getting bites, not a lot, but certainly enough to be interesting. Dad
caught the first fish, a blue cod. Then Jim caught one too, but it was
only a 'spotty'. The bites continued and the sun was sparkling off the
water. It was an idyllic morning.
We caught another couple of fish but both were rather small. We decided to
try a different place, so up came the lines, carefully coiled in the bottom
of the boat in such a way that they would not tangle. Then Jim pulled up
the anchor and we rowed slowly to a place a little further to sea.
We dropped anchor again and in due course had our lines at the bottom
again. Here we got some really promising bites. Alister pulled in a red
cod and I got a blue cod. This was great.
Suddenly Dad shouted, "Pull up your lines!" We were flabbergasted. We
were just getting what we had come for. Dad saw our hesitation and he
became quite fierce in repeating the demand. He added, "Look at the
horizon!" Instead of a smooth line the water showed jagged edges. Clearly
there was a rough sea arriving.
We did not mess about any more and we were soon rowing as fast as possible
back to the beach at the Bay. By the time we got there the tide had come
in quite a long way and a moderate swell was making rowing quite difficult.
Beaching a boat in these conditions is a problem as the waves tend to turn
the boat side on and there is risk of capsizing. We made our plan, and
then waiting for a suitable wave we rowed towards the beach.
We could feel the waves lift us and turn us sideways. We rowed furiously
to keep the bow to the shore and the stern to sea. In spite of our best
efforts we tilted frighteningly sideways. Several times we managed to
correct it and finally we were able to get to the beach.
The person in the bow leapt out with the painter and pulled hard. The
waves continued to make things difficult, but the rest of us were able to
scramble out, and we pulled the boat to safety but got pretty wet in the
process.
The waves became worse after that and we were very glad to be ashore again.
We had some fish and had had an instructive adventure.
You always have to be alert when you are at sea in a small boat.
Alex recalls his fishing expeditions on the east coast of the North
Island.
I went fishing at Kairakau Beach and Maungakuri Beach in an area with a
small tidal range. Part was sandy but there were also large stretches of
rocky platform with pools full of seaweed. My brother and I would walk
through the pools at low tide and fish for paua and crayfish. Sometimes we
fished by hand with our heads under water without wearing our goggles. The
only diving equipment we had was goggles and snorkels.
Our rods were home made, but with my rod I caught rock cod, parrot fish and
spotties. In the rock pools I used a net and caught butterfish.
People used to make crayfish pots out of interlaced supplejack and Number 8
wire - that nearly universal Kiwi solution to construction problems.
There was a funnel neck and a hole at the top. Paua or fish bait was
used, or sometimes even old mutton. At the beginning of summer the
crayfish were plentiful.
Once I was twelve or thirteen I would go fishing without my elder brother,
though it was a dangerous coast with no shelter and consequently not
popular for boating. People get washed off rocks when fishing but in the
hundreds of hours I spent fishing I never saw a threatening wave. I think
that the East Coast is actually less dangerous than the West Coast.
I'm still an enthusiastic fisherman but now I prefer to fish in Lake Taupo.
Alister remembers fishing at Kokoroa near Nelson.
We stayed in an old whare (hut) at Kokoroa at the mouth of the Whangamoa
River, an estuarine area with extensive mudflats.
At this site we tried various types of fishing. We used hand nets to catch
whitebait, and fished off the rocks for cod. We tried spearing fish but
didn't have much success.
We could set nets across some of the subsidiary channels and catch
flounder. We had a clinker-built ten foot dinghy. Three of us could carry
it from the car trailer down a steep bank to a flat meadow beside the hut.
We would put the net on the back seat of the boat and row down a subsidiary
channel of the river at low tide to choose a site for the net. We would
hammer in stakes and set the net across the channel at high tide. The
water at high tide would cause a curve in the net. Towards low tide, four
or five hours later we would find fish in and near the net and put them in
a sack near the boat. At the end of the trip my father would take some of
the catch to the local Maori.
I'll never forget the time my friend and I were rowing flat out up the
river fighting the current and hit a log which went through the bow of the
boat, making a hole just above the water line. We were NOT popular.
Readers, do share with us some of your fishing experiences in the years
between 1925 and 1950.
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