Roger Moroney feels lucky to have grown up near a beach and recalls a few fishy tales. Photo / File
Roger Moroney feels lucky to have grown up near a beach and recalls a few fishy tales. Photo / File
During my young years, when the last of the plesiosaurs walked the plains, I would watch in both fascination and expectation, as the lads along the seafront road pulled the kontiki in.
I, and my brothers and sister, were so very lucky to grow up on a beachfront, for itwas an ever-changing venue of sights, sounds … and the occasional fish.
I have scratchy memories of seeing the lads drawing in the kontiki they had set sail when the westerly winds came-a-calling.
They always seemed happy as they hauled the thing in, and maybe, in hindsight, it had something to do with the bin of (empty) bottles which accompanied them on their journey up across the shingle spread back to their seafront homes further along from us.
The starkest memory I have, and I recall it as it surprised us kids at the time, is of one of the chaps de-hooking a fish and gently, carefully, returning it to the waves.
"Too small," he must have said.
He was the biggest of the crew so no arguments there.
These local angling lads would occasionally take a small boat out and drop nets just beyond the breakers seeking, and nabbing, stuff like flounder … which are gone these days.
One day they set sail (oars) in a ferocious easterly and it tipped.
They lost a lot of gear, although I think they were most upset as the box of cool refreshments they had with them also went to the bottom.
And so (it came to pass) that back in the early 80s me and my brothers also decided to harness the wind in search of some fresh finned food for tea.
I built the thing, using an old rubber car tyre tube (like the flounder they are now rare to find) and some strips of timber they had in the old shed out the back.
A plastic sheet sail which would drop when the large lolly wrapped in fine cloth melted and let the line free from the o-ring which was on the waterline.
It was a gem, which we named (over a celebratory liquid christening on the beach) the Titanic.
For I sensed that if it were anything like the stuff I made during third form woodwork it would disintegrate.
It drifted off smartly in the westerly and reached the 400 metre line limit in about an hour.
Twenty baited hooks attached.
Roger Moroney
It was all too good to be true, and one of the chaps suggested there would certainly be a line break soon and the thing would make the Chathams by midnight.
But no, for at the end of the day, having hauled in all our refreshments, we took turns turning the old hose reel device which housed the nylon line, and we struck two kahawai.
"Next Sunday yeah?" was the declaration.
"If we get a westerly," it was pointed out.
It was down to the weather … for if the off-shore winds played hide and seek then that was that.
So then, the other night on telly I saw some advert thing about a hi-tech motorised "kontiki" which could sail out in any wind and any weather.
And some bloke appeared with some sort of 'app' thing to assist in the baiting up of it.
All very automatic and programmed, which didn't feel right to an old windjammer like me.
We used to like to think the kahawai and kingfish could sense an onshore wind above and gleefully declare "all's well lads … the kontiki crew is in limbo".
Not the surfcasting boys though, and a couple of the blokes we used to see casting could really get the hook and sinker out there.
In time there'll likely be an i-surfcaster app-driven thing I suspect.
This is advancing age baiting me for sure, as I reckon the build-it-yourself and wait for a good wind is the way to do it.
We had our days and the fishies had their days.
And there was always a Plan B.
It was known as the local fish and chip shop.
- Roger Moroneyis an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off-centre.
