Fishy Business!
From a very early age my dad quite regularly used to take me out on fishing trips off the South Coast. I can vividly remember my excitement heightened by the earthy pungent aroma of the clinker built fishing boats; they smelt like a sort of farmyard of the sea, a heady odour from decades of catches in contact with the tar and linseed oil ingrained timbers of the old boats with a background tang of rusty corroded diesels and bilges awash with old black engine oil and sea water. I never remember coming back from one of those trips without a sack full of fish and a beaming face. It’s probably those fond memories of times with my Dad that sometimes encourages me to pull out a line when I am sailing. So, having heard of a few disparaging rumours going around the club about my purported lack of success in fishing attempts, I wanted to set the record straight. Here, therefore, are three accounts of fishing ‘successes’ while sailing with HSSC friends.
The Mediterranean Sardine Fishicide
Janet and Adair were as sceptical as anyone else when a few years ago I turned up with Nicky for a Mediterranean cruise aboard their Etap 38 ‘Spirit of Fairfax’ and announced that I had brought my feathered hooks and hand line and intended catching a few as we were going along. On the first day of the trip to ‘the Islands’ with little wind and the boat pottering along under engine at about 5 knots I cast the line over the stern and promised the crew ‘freshly caught dinner tonight!’. As the day wore on there was depressingly, not even a squeak of a fish to get excited about. Whatever the reason, nothing was biting on this trip. As our destination hove in site I pulled the line in one more time and, lo and behold, there on the last hook was just one, single, very drowned looking sardine. Very strange! You don’t ever catch sardines one at a time. Like you can’t buy them in the supermarket in packets of less than about 20. You’re supposed to hit a shoal and end up with one on each of seven hooks! It must have been dragged behind the boat for all of 30 minutes and I felt quite bad about the rather unpleasant water torture this poor little creature had endured!……. not so bad however, that it wasn’t going to end up in the pan!
‘Well’ I said, “told you it would be ‘freshly caught’ for this evening….I’m cooking tonight”. To the bewilderment of the decidedly unimpressed crew I proceeded to gut, clean and fillet this 5 inch long sardine. It was pan fried with a little flour, lemon juice, olive oil, sea salt and pepper. After tying up in Porqueroll I opened a bottle of nicely chilled Pino Grigio poured out 4 glasses and carefully divided the sardine into 4 equal teaspoonfuls. We toasted the skipper and ceremoniously ate our share of the little creature. ‘Ate’ is probably a bit unfair as each share was only enough for a swallow and certainly not enough to use teeth. But it did provide a little ‘sup cent’ before going out to dinner and no one could say I didn’t catch (at least a ‘little’ of) dinner. The only downside was that the galley and boat smelled of fish the owners said, for many months afterwards and Janet was definitely not a very happy bunny about that. An update on the state of the fishy smelling Etap 38 became the standard ‘Hello’ greeting between the Butchins and us for years afterwards!
The ‘man overboard’ incident of 1998.
Fish were visible on the surface of the glassy Solent waters that beautiful summer day which was to be the HSSC June practical training event for novices. I could not possibly let the opportunity pass. I assembled my rod with a line, hooks and weights and cast from the stern of Ulysses. The newcomers on board were clearly trying to get their brains around the idea of us demonstrating how to recover an unconscious person by first hooking them with mackerel feathers! Meanwhile Gill (Woodbridge), who, strangely, was more concerned about the training than the fish, hurled a bucket overboard with dan buoy attached while explaining to the novices (who weren’t quite sure which of us they should be watching) something about the dead weight of unconscious people, tidal drift and the importance of hooking (with line or boathook? they were thinking!) the overboard person and getting him/her alongside the vessel.
The proof of my fishing expertise came just as Gill expertly helmed Ulysses alongside the man overboard ‘bucket’. The rod suddenly bent double and almost leapt out of my hands. The pandemonium that broke loose at that moment will not be recorded as one of the finest moments in the annals of High Seas Sailing Club training. I recall a few snippets of the ensuing cries and shouts from skipper, training staff and newcomers. “I’ve got one!: Bucket or dan buoy?: fish!: fish?: Bring it alongside, QUICKLY!: Can’t its fighting too hard: NO… the bucket!: Can’’t get hold of it: I thought it was on the hook?: NO, I mean the danbuoy!: Pass me the boathook, NOW!: It’s OK…Its not that big!: NOT FOR THE FISH YOU FOOL! … to hook the bucket!: Give me the bucket FAST!:. We haven’t got it aboard yet!. I mean the other one for the fish, stupid!”….and so on.
I successfully heaved the fish, a slimy, wriggling, ugly, eel like specimen called a ‘ling’, over the pushpit. Meanwhile Gill, leaning over the guardrail ready to recover the man overboard bucket, called ‘give me that boathook NOW!’. She reached out behind her and her hand closed, not around the boathook she was expecting, but around this cold, writhing, slippery, snake like creature on the end of the line. The whites of Gill’s eyes were noticeable to all of us on the way up and down as she let out a piercing screech and catapulted 3ft straight up in the air without seemingly any leg movement at all. People rightly think of Gill as calm and unflappable in times of stress when afloat. Well, on this occasion the newcomers may not have learnt too much about man overboard recovery but they certainly experienced some interesting new English language expletives the like of which I was rather surprised Gill had in her vocabulary!….. The fish was put back alive into the Solent (it’s not kosher anyway!), the bucket was never seen again but the danbuoy was recovered and survived.
Odyssey of the Mull Mackerel
My final account took place on Dave Robson’s tall ship expedition around the Western Isles which we joined in Oban with 10 other HSSC members. As normal I could not resist throwing into my bag a handline, just in case a fishing opportunity came up. On about the 5th day of the trip we anchored in a small deep loch off the Sound of Mull; a fabulous location with stunning views and crystal clear water. When I announced that I was intending to try for some fish in the morning the crew humoured me a little, I guess thinking “that’s what happens to people when they nearly reach sixty. Get crazy ideas in crazy places!” .
I got up at 6.00am and went on deck. Unwinding the handline fully with all 60 metres or so and it still did not reach the bottom. I used the dipping technique of raising and lowering the line which sometimes attracts mackerel. Well, to cut a fishy story short, I immediately went into three mackerel on one line. When the first person came on deck (Richard Marks) I went into another 6 and he and I decided to stop at 12 which would be enough for everyone on board to partake in a fish.
I will to this day still look back in incredulity and a little horror at the performance of my friend Richard when it came to dealing the last rights to the catch and preparing them for the pan. Unlike with the Mediterranean sardine we first had to call the priest, sorry! the rabbi, in the form of a heavy winch handle to quieten down these very lively Scottish specimens. Now most of us know Richard as a quiet, unassuming, gentleman known for his sound level headed judgement both as a friend and a magistrate. Well that day I saw another side to Richard as he went to town on these poor fish. Not a murmur of Kaddish before wielding the winch handle as if he was Grog – the slayer…Not fully sated when eventually the battlefield lay quiet, Dick the Disemboweller (as he later became known) pulled out his razor sharp dagger and with an air of glee on his face proceeded to slit open and gut every fish with a frenzy not seen since Ulma Therman’s performance at the tea house in Kill Bill 1!. Holly (then aged 2) has never looked at Richard in quite the same way since she came across him on the deck of that ship kneeling over a bucket full of his victims with dagger still in hand. Fish scales, blood, guts, fish eyes, fins hung or dribbled down his face, shirt, shorts and legs and there was a glazed look in his eyes as he looked down at his handywork, in the form of the fish heads bobbing around the bucket of red sea water! Sends a shiver down me spine even now!
Actually, the ships cook said Richard (a vegetarian and non fish eater) did an amazing job,. At about 11am that morning while underway she served up 12 absolutely deliciously fresh pan fried mackerel fillets which the whole ships company sat down to and demolished with hunks of granary bread and butter and fresh lemons. Well done Richard!
Out of the Sea – Into the Pan
Catching Mackerel and Sardines
A handline is the most convenient fishing gear for a sailing boat as it takes up hardly any room in your bag. One with a string of brightly coloured feathered hooks can be bought for about £3.00. For an extra £3.00. or so you can buy a fluorescent planing device which keeps the line deep in the water when being towed and will pop up to the surface when a fish is on the line. There are basically two means of using this equipment. You can simply tow the line under engine or while sailing the boat. If you are not using a planning device when towing you will need to experiment with weights to ensure the line sinks deep for any given boat speed. Ensure all links to weights and feathered lines have swivel fittings otherwise the line will get badly tangled. Boat speed should be about 2 knots but I have caught mackerel in Poole Bay at 5kts
The second alternative is to weight the end of the line after the last feather and let the boat drift with the tide. Unwind the hand line until the weith has dropped to about 20 metres and then simply raise and lower the line so the feathered hooks are moving line a shoal. Experiment with different depths.
When you have finally caught mackerel or sardines and given them the last rights my favourite way to prepare them is to gut and clean thoroughly in a bucket. Fillet them by removing the central bone. Dry and sprinkle with lemon juice and dust in seasoned flour. Use sea salt and pepper to season. Heat up a pan with a little olive oil and some sliced garlick and quickly pan fry the fillets for about 90 seconds either side. Serve with crusty bread and Pinot Grigio. Delicious!!
David Weisfield