The shortage of whiting, which has prompted the Minister of Fisheries to say there are other fish in the sea, has brought a sour smile to the cracked lips of the hard-bitten brotherhood of jetty, ledge and beach.
Having endured the inroads of foppish whiting fishermen into my slow, painfully constructed accounts of rigorous days among the shrieking gulls and be-rugged wives where the sea meets the sky across the gulf, I can only say that the breed that goes swanking around with two outboards and an Esky the size of a floating dock deserves all it gets.
You caught only tommies, sneered a whiting fisherman in our office as he minced distastely from the presence of an honest journeyman who has fished the Grange jetty for so long that children have carved their initials on him.
Relating the art
The poor fellow was merely relating the art of catching the tommy ruff with a freezing wind coming over the sea and his numbed fingers peeping from the periphery of old gloves; the art of reading the message of tug and tide upon one’s sensitive line.
The tommy fisherman strums the Stradivarius of ne sea, playing his concertos of the catch with a finesse that Yehudi Menuhin would applaud.
But the whiting fisherman must have the unrelented lunge of his fish on the line, leering at his slacks-and-sweatered spouse pouring coffee or some North Arm concoction to warm the cockles of his heart and strengthen his mussels.
Once I was taken out by whiting fishermen and dare I say, I was also taken in.
They made me do such menial tasks as raising their accursed anchor which wrapped itself around the waving weed and enveloped me in a kind of marine botanic garden.
I was also enjoined to watch for a sandy bottom.
Got the message
There were several on other boats and nice ones too, but I eventually got the message after being hit twice with a heavy sinker.
What they actually meant was sand on the seabed into which the fabled whiting forayed, loose-jawed to satisfy the ego trippers floating on their ritzy fibreglass platform above.
The whiting came aboard. The fishermen congratulated each other, making me serve drinks and pump the bilge.
Once a mullet was deposited in my basket with bellowing beneficence. a crumb from Neptune’s table.
Before we turned the bow for home and I had my last encounter with the floricultural anchor, I was allowed to gut the fish.
I was given a board much as a scullery maid gets the washing up. I scaled, beheaded and operated like a seagoing M*A*S*H. I was screamed at because of my poor filleting although I did a nice job on my finger.
Meanwhile, the whiting aristocracy lounged in foam rubber opulence, eating cold chicken while the aging sea nymph frolicked in her T-shirt bearing the eye-stopping epigram “Catch of the Year.”
Eventually we reached the shore and there was the finale of a whiting fisherman’s day. We bombed out on the boat ramp; the winch failed, the boat tried to relaunch itself over my stomach and the propeller placed a shamrock of bruises on my left thigh.
Never again, I told myself.
So I have returned to my beach and to my jetty where one gives nothing away except breath.
No wonder I snarl at the vulgar roar of whiting boats as they clamour across the cringing waves.
There may be fish in the sea beside whiting but keep your distance. Come after any of mine and I’ll give you a squid jag straight through the gizzard.
And let the sea lice pick your bones, shiver me aging timbers if I don’t.
Max Fatchen