Colins Manihiki fishing stories
Pacific Bliss
Colin Price
Thu 26 Jul 2012 04:19
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Manihiki is an island of fishermen
and each one seems to have a technique for getting one fish or
another.
Mackerel
Fishing
 I'd idly got to talking to some gents about
fishing and they asked if I had been mackerel fishing here. Well I remeber
trolling mackerel lines behind the boat in the Channel, but needless to say here
it is different. I asked my tutor what we would need and he said, "fins
and a mask, and I'll prepare the rest". Still a mystery. The appointed
hour came and I picked him and his daughter up from the shore in our dinghy and
we went back to the boat. Then he stuffed a load of grated coconut into
his mouth and spoke through it that I should do likewise - hard to breath at
this point. THen into the water we hop and look around underneath for a
shoal fo mackerel. Once spotted the trick is to dive down in front of the
shoal and spit out the coconut in a salivary cloud, give it a flip with a fin to
spread it out, and then head for the surface. Hopefully the fish will
follow into the bait, then the next 'cloud' is laid closer to the surface until
the fish are all around. Then from the dinghy are produced tiny half metre
canes with a short piece of line, a barbless hook with some white cotton the
end to resemble coconut. Whilst still in the water you dangle this
into the could of coconut, and hook a mackerel, flick it into the dinghy where
hopefully it falls off the hook, then down again for another, all the while
baiting the area with coconut. Fantastic fun when the fish are in, fast
and furious - left me laughing afterwards. We caught more than 40 fish between
the two of us, each 20cm long. Perfect.
Rod fishing for
Tuna
 Here we use monster hooks that they call, 'tuna
circles'. Lace a bait fish like mackerel onto the hook and drop to 50-60m
just off the back of the boat. I'd have more to report if I actually
caught anything, and didnt have my bait taken by little fish before I ever got
it down far enough.
Milk fish
trapping
  This was a village expedition to an outer motu
to 'harvest milk fish for the second time this year. The village stock a
brackish pond with milk fish in case a cycolne comes along and wipes out all
their food supplies. Once in a while they go and harvest the larger fish
and share them around the village.
We use a 3 and 5/8" monofilament gill net for
the job. Wade out shin deep through the mud circling the fish and catching
800 or so in an hour. Everyone eats them raw whilst we are there and back
on the boat we make Ika Mata (raw fish with coconut milk) in the evening and
soussed milk fish overnight in vinegar, with our share much like
orkney marinated herring - both very good.
Fish
trapping
  There are various fish traps made of piled up
blocks of coral formed into ever-decreasing channels until they enter a pool via
a small entrance, each carefully designed for a type of fish. I'm holding
a net with a couple of decent surgeon fish from the shallow maze behind me, and
Cathy is sitting in wait for the Titi (Moorish Idol) run to start when she'll
jump in the water with the coconut frond and usher the fish into a small pond at
the end of the trap where they'll be scooped out. Though we didn't see it
happen as we were a week too early they can get hundreds in a day. Meant
to be very good eating as well.
Netting
 We netted across the motus for milk fish,
snappers and parrot fish
Cane
fishing
 Out on the reef at dusk hunting for
small grouper and snappers with John Williams. Hoping between sharp
coral heads as it got darker, defeated me in the end and I waded home shortly
before John returned with a bucketful of fish hanging from his
shoulder.
Oyster
diving
 We asked Matieu and Rangi if we
could pick up some oysters for the korori (meat) and this we did for a
day. With a hooka system (compressor on the surface pumping air
down a pipe to a standard diving regulator) to breath whilst diving we
collected nine baskets of discarded pearl shells (black lipped oysters) and
spent the day opening them and shucking out the meat. We ended up with ten
small bags of meat for our efforts so you can see why korori is a rare as
rocking horse poo. Thanks to R and M for a great day and everything that
went with it.
Smoked
fish KaiKai
   Mr Api, possibly running as the next
prime-minister of the Cook Islands and keep fisherman, (fingers crossed
he does, he's a wonderful, honest, man of the island people). Whilst
much of the village is away in Rarotonga for the festivities those that remain
often eat together by the wharf, and loves to run up his smoker-bins in
the evening. He splits open the fish into halves, and then bastes them
with brown sugar and soy sauce. The smoke is from coconut sawdust and
gives a lovely flavour.
We spent three or four nights ashore with the
villagers and ate the fish accompanied with breadfruit, rice, coconuts,
wonderful hospitality and alway magic home made music.
Shark swiping
 One of the less obvious types of 'fishing' is
killing sharks. All you need is a machette and some bait. Hang over
the wall and wallop at a shark as it passes. Sport?
Ethical?
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