Why I'm a fishing freak

By Jack Walsh

MY first regular fishing days from a boat started at age 14, when my dad bought an old Gordon’s Bay seaplane tender at a bankruptcy auction in the harbour. Several years earlier, a combined effort by the SA navy and airforce to establish a seaplane base at Gordon’s Bay had failed, as nobody had factored in the wind at the home of the southeaster. Diesel engines were still a thing of the future, so the tender was powered by two 100hp Meadows petrol engines.

My first lessons about commercial fishing costs and income were then learnt! The motors’ two 100 gallon fuel tanks almost gurgled as the fuel burnt up. This was a considerable cost, even though petrol in those days was purchased at a little over a shilling per gallon. I also learnt the value of a good catch, which, apart from feeding the farm staff, could be sold to pay for part of the fuel.

We seldom needed to go far. We caught kob off the five Steenbras Dam houses, kob or geelbek (Cape salmon) on the rocky banks off the Steenbras River mouth, and geelbek off Boskloof Point. If those species were not biting, there were always some red roman or red stumpnose on the bottom — never a lot mind you, unless the warm, clear blue water had set into the area.The full time commercial “tok-tokkies” seldom targeted bottom redfish intentionally, simply heading for the silverfish banks in the middle of False Bay if the kob and geelbek were not feeding.

In winter the bigger deck boats would transfer to Hout Bay for the West Coast snoek run, whilst the smaller boats stayed with the silverfish, weather permitting. There were, incidentally, very few pleasure boats in those days, with only a few at each of Gordon’s Bay, Kalk Bay, and Simon’s Town, where the navy frequently asked them to leave for one reason or another.

Yellowtail were often targeted, and sometimes mackerel and elf (shad). Tuna, when encountered, were ignored, being, in the fisherman’s vernacular, “enormous mackerel line-breakers”. It was only in the 1950s that a few intrepid and wealthy Cape Town sportfishermen acquired pleasure boats suitable for seeking tuna in the deep off Cape Point. Those “enormous mackerel” turned out to be yellowfin and longfin tuna, with, as time went by, the odd bigeye tuna, southern bluefin tuna, mako shark and marlin.

At about the same time, rock anglers became aware of the shoals of yellowfin passing close to the ledges of Rooikranz, which then became one of the few places on earth where shore anglers could target tuna.

By the age of 20, I had graduated to a 15 foot (4.5 m) bakkieman’s discarded purse seine dinghy. With the help of a friend I repaired and converted it to an ideal linefish bakkie (boat). Then I purchased an 18hp Evinrude outboard to power it.

I vividly recall one particular outing … It was 3 a.m. and a light fog made everything and everyone look ghostly. There was a very cool and somewhat damp breeze drifting off the land, which would hopefully drive the fog seawards until the warmth of the rising sun burned it away. Being a Saturday, several crews of semi-commercial fishing craft were hanging around to see whether the fog would thicken or lift as daybreak approached.

I waded out to SW 15 which was moored to a cement block just off the beach. I then rowed her over to the little landing built into the jetty. It was close to high tide, so Bully, my fishing partner, was standing on the upper level to hand me the outboard motor. It was not light! I wrestled it onto the boat and mounted it on the transom. The petrol tank followed and was duly connected. I told Bully that we would try to leave despite the fog, and would see whether the very bright red guiding lights remained visible long enough to enable us to navigate safely out of the “poort” and take us far enough through it. If we could manage that, then it would be safe enough to keep a straight line into the incoming swell.

Alan, a man who would later become my best friend, was going out on his father’s boat, and yelled that they would not come to rescue us if we capsized in the rather narrow channel between the breakers!

As it turned out, the lights were bright enough, and we soon entered that strange overwhelming darkness of the fog. Once I was sure that we were far enough out to avoid the reefs and breaking water, the noise of which had almost disappeared, we turned to starboard at an angle of about 35° from our previous course, edging towards a fishing spot known as “Nuwemoddergat”.

Of course, I needed the streetlights and the lights of the DeBeers dynamite factory to throw anchor in the right position, with no such things as echo sounders or position fixing equipment yet on the horizon. I knew the approximate running time at half speed on a very flat sea to get there, and aside from that, just had to trust our luck. Suddenly, to our amazement, some lights suddenly shone through the fog from the shore, and I realised that the land breeze had swung to the north-west and was already dispersing the fog in our area.

Judging by the brightness of the lights, I could identify them as coming from the Da Gama Hotel, though I still could not see the other lights from DeBeers.

Nevertheless I knew the approximate angle that I should be looking at the lights from the hotel, and that would have to do. We let down the anchor quietly so as not to disturb the hoped for shoal of kob that had been there the previous evening. The length of anchor rope indicated that we were approximately at the right depth.

We baited our lines, letting them sink to the bottom, then recovering about two fathoms. As it was still pitch dark, if the fish were there, they would be well off the bottom. Bully had a strike, saying that something took his line on the way down, and landed — somewhat unexpectedly — a large elf. I quickly threw out a drift line with a small piece of fish on a 1/0 hook.

At the same time, I felt my hand line tighten on my thigh, and hauled up, disappointingly, a large barbel. Then my

hand line ran again, and out came a mackerel, which at least ensured that we would catch fresh bait to go with our chokka (squid). We then let our lines down halfway to the bottom, thinking that we might just as well catch some nice elf, but, following solid strikes, we each landed two “koptel” kob of over 2.5kg.

As the sun rose, the other boats started arriving, but by then our middle compartment, between the dinghy’s two seats, was nearly full. The kob had almost stopped biting, and those that intermittently still did, were on the small side. We upped anchor, happy in the knowledge that our fish would be first on the market with no competition.

I slowly steered back to the jetty to give Bully a chance to bunch the small fish, two at a time, with reeds. We arrived back at the jetty to the cries in Afrikaans of: “Here’s young Jack, at it again!” It was good for my ego. I knew I had a special intuition for fish and fishing which was partly learnt, but mainly granted as a gift to me in the same way as the skills of any outstanding sportsperson.

The fish were thrown up onto the jetty, bunches to one side, singles to another, and those over five or six kilos went to the end. In those days we still worked in pounds and shillings, and that day the fish earned us over £60, of which Bully got 25%. Not a bad morning’s reward, when you consider that my monthly salary was £50!

You may ask where I am going with all of this. Well, when conditions are right, commercial ski-boats still come in with this sort of catch. Sometimes, though not very often anymore, with geelbek, and often in this past year with a small catch of redfish. The silverfish (doppies) are back on the deeper banks, and growing bigger all the time, though presently the sizes of all fish caught are much s----maller than they were in the old days.

Today, on a really nice day, excluding the tuna and yellowtail boats going out to and past Cape Point, you will probably encounter only 10 to 30 ski-boats in False Bay, of which maybe one third will be commercially licensed. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the fishing was still pretty good and compliance was non-existent, so that all boats — commercial and recreational — could catch whatever they liked and sell their catch.

Over a nice weekend and during the Christmas holidays, the number of boats out would easily exceed 100. There probably had been overfishing since the 1970s, but I believe it reached its peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

There is, in my mind, no doubt that the disturbance caused by so many boats, coupled to the popularity of shore angling, resulted in far too many fish being caught to be sustainable. I also believe the fishing activity drove many of the remaining fish out of the bay.

By the end of the first decade of the millennium, the number of boats and shore anglers had decreased by over 50%, and has probably stayed at the level of 25% or less for the last decade, solely because of the lack of fish. Amidst this peace and quiet, I now believe that the fish are slowly returning, though I doubt this will be the case for the average rock and surf angler.

This is because of increasing disturbances caused by the high numbers of people on the shore’s fringes and beaches, coupled with increasing pollution.

I believe the increasing fish population has only been happening over the past five years or so. Red roman are once again fairly prolific though very small this year, indicating a reasonably large

population of fish just over the minimum size. Red stumpnose are also appearing again in small numbers, though they were never prolific, even in my youth, unless you encountered a feeding shoal on a bank which happened very rarely. Please also remember that all bottomfeeding redfish are very slow growing.

I often get asked what ranks as my most exciting fishing experience ever in False Bay … that’s easy!

I was due to get married one Saturday, and I had promised my parents and wife-to-be that I would go easy on the fishing that week so that I would not be worn out for the wedding or the honeymoon. Unfortunately, it was full moon, and on the Tuesday there were some strong rumours of a lot of fish down at Swartklip — more or less the middle point of the Bay’s shoreline. Wednesday was still days before my wedding, so, with the promise to my parents that I would be home by 10 p.m. — by which time they would be asleep and hear nothing — Alan and I set off at five in the afternoon. The rumours were right, and by 4 a.m., with the moon sinking towards the western horizon, our boat was so full we had to go home.

Alan undertook to sell the fish and then moor SW 15 so that I could get home, bath and shave to be at work by 8:30 a.m., which I did with no one any the wiser. Thursday was still miles away from the wedding, so off we went again with the same promises.

This time the gods really smiled upon us; geelbek were mixed with the kob, and by midnight we were over full. In fact, when we started for home I found that the light southerly wind that was blowing caused the white horses to splash over the gunnel, and I am very ashamed to say we actually had to dump some fish to avoid sinking.

Friday was again still and quiet, though this time it took quite some persuading to get my parents to allow me to go at all.

As Alan was committed to being at university early the next day, my other friend, Bully, came with me.We started to catch fish by 5 p.m., long before the sun went down and the moon came up, though the taxman (sharks) took a number of our fish.

When it was nearly dark, we moved away to another bank. The moon came up a bit later, though despite heavy plankton lighting up the water before it had risen high enough, the fish bit through. At 10 p.m. the clouds came over, and you could almost have read a book by the light of the plankton.

The fish continued biting, but suddenly the taxmen found us again, and we were lucky if we landed one out of every three fish we hooked. In the end, there were seven ghostly shapes, eerily etched by the plankton, circling us, and at least two looked bigger than our boat.

We already had a good catch, so we went home and I was actually in bed a little after midnight.The following morning I was refreshed enough to enjoy the wedding, reception, and then leave on our honeymoon to Durban.

Believe it or not, those three nights enabled me to pay off the loan on my latest second hand car, pay for the additional furniture for our new flat which I had bought on credit, and paid for all the honeymoon expenses with a fair bit over in the end.

And some still ask why I have always been a fishing freak!