Geoff Thomas: Spinning a yarn

When fishermen gather around a bottle or a bar they invariably start telling stories that are sworn to be based on the honest truth. And they usually are, for no imagination can come up with some of the bizarre happenings that occur on the water.

A standard theme seems to involve recapturing a lost fish. This happens often enough to reinforce the belief that fish do not have a memory.

Like the fly fisherman who told of re-catching the same large rainbow jack at a stream mouth one night.

"We were fishing a lake near Rotorua and the fish were coming into the rip where they hang around before running up the stream to spawn. It was only a small stream and I hooked and brought in what turned out to be a big trout. It was an old jack, dark coloured with fins ragged from fighting, a mean hooked lower jaw, and it was pretty long and thin in the body. So I put it back and thought no more about it until 45 minutes later when I caught what was obviously the same fish.

"I put it back again, and sure enough I hooked it a third time a bit later. That fish must have had a death wish, for when I caught it the fourth time I knocked it on the head and buried it under the tomato plants," he said.

Such a trout would make poor table fare, and healthy tomatoes seemed a better option.

"It proved that being caught does not seem to bother the trout."

The poor condition of the fish may have been a factor. A trout in prime condition would probably not be so inclined towards repeating its mistake. Snapper fishermen tell similar stories. A few mates were surfcasting one night from a beach in the Bay of Plenty when one of the guys hooked and lost a fish. On pulling in his line he found that the hook had broken off, so he tied on a new hook and resumed fishing.

Then about an hour later he had a bite, struck and brought in a nice snapper. But when he put a torch on the fish he was astounded to see that it was not actually hooked on his hook.

"What happened was my hook had gone through the eye of another hook which was in the snapper's jaw. I recognised the hook in its mouth and it was he one I had broken off earlier. What are the chances of it getting hooked in such a way? It was swimming along and somehow got the point of my new hook through the eye of the one in its mouth."

When you think it through it is unusual, but not far-fetched. The snapper was no doubt investigating the bait, so it was biting or mouthing it, and by chance the two hooks connected.

Stories of fish being caught with hooks in their mouths or elsewhere are pretty common, which goes to show they can survive injuries which we think may be life-threatening. Hooks will rust away in saltwater, and snapper have been caught with a piece of monofilament line protruding from their anal vent.

What happens is they break the line when hooked and carry around a length of trace material attached to the hook in their mouth. Eventually they swallow the trace and it passes through their system.

You would think the fish would suffer from such injury, but they will usually be in fine condition and obviously eating and functioning well.

Trout fishermen who fish on lakes will often catch trout trolling or harling which have a deformed jaw. It is usually one corner of the mouth that is twisted, and is an old injury which has healed. What has happened is the fish has taken a lure being fished on heavy trolling tackle, probably while young and the mouth is still quite soft and easily torn. The trout breaks free, causing what looks like a horrific injury but which heals well and the fish thrives - until it is caught again.

But some stories do stretch the boundaries.

The famous shark-under-the-wharf one is probably based on a real event. A bloke working on a remote cattle station in Australia's Northern Territory reckoned that when they wanted some entertainment they would go down to the local wharf where there was a good population of sharks in the shallows. They would slice open a leg of kangaroo and conceal a stick of dynamite in it with just the fuse sticking out.

Then they would spread plenty of berley and chopped meat around the place to attract the sharks. One day everything was going according to plan and a big shark turned up so they lit the fuse and tossed in the bait.

The shark swallowed it but instead of swimming out to sea it turned and swam under the wharf where it blew up, destroying a section of wharf and leaving the blokes stuck on the end and cut off. Too scared to swim across the shark-infested gap they waited for two days to be rescued.

Then there are the stories of whole rods being pulled into the sea or knocked off a boat. That happens a lot, but when the rod is later recovered and a huge fish is still attached, the bottles being consumed are probably starting to have an effect.

But isn't the telling of the story half the satisfaction?