SATANIC PAPAYAS

LIKE HYENAS AND LIONS, PETER COETZEE AND TRIGGERFISH LOVE TO DO BATTLE. HAVING STUDIED HIS FRENEMIES UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL BY CATCHING THEM ALL OVER THE WORLD (AND EVEN GYOTAKU-ING ONE INTO AN ARTWORK), WHEN PETE ENCOUNTERED A BEHEMOTH YELLOW MARGIN TRIGGERFISH IN THE MALDIVES, HE WAS READY.

Photos. Peter Coetzee, Steffan Shultz

“Man, the gee tee were sa-ta-nic today!”

I can still hear the phrase coming out of Nicola’s mouth right now. I first heard the colourful, Italian, fly-fishing tour operator describe fish as “satanic” (pronounced sah-tah-niek) while sitting in the lounge of his steel catamaran off the coast of Sudan. Since then it has stuck in my fishing vocabulary.

I’d travelled to the Maldives hoping for weird things… A new parrotfish species, sweetlips, something colourful. I’d found some of those and, to my delight, healthy triggerfish numbers. My relationship with triggers can only be described as a competitive rivalry that they don’t know they’re in. I particularly enjoy setting the hook. It’s the same sort of sadistic joy I imagine they get destroying crustaceans or biting divers when they’re moody or on the nest. I play the role of the Punisher in my own little triggerfish movie. Like many great rivalries, there is a lot of love too. At least from my side. Every single trigger you will meet has a slightly different way about him, and, if I can stretch it, a different personality, something that’s quite rare among fish. If you’re a sight fisherman and you’re exposed to them enough, the trigger love will get you. They’re an octopus in a world of cuttlefish. Intelligent, cunning, curious, aggressive.

I’ll also admit that my obsession with them has led me to killing one for a gyotaku, (the Japanese art of printing fish onto rice paper). Although gyotaku involves the death of an animal, nothing will tell you more about their form. Every scale has Braille on it, two or three little spots per scale. And they have multiple different types of skin on their body. That moustache on a titan triggerfish is not just colour, it’s an entire texture difference that shows itself in a print. It may or may not surprise you that, after spending an hour-and-a-half in a hole in the sand on some little island in Sudan, the particular unfortunate titan that I decided to print, still tried to bite me when I dug it out of the sand. I learnt that day that they can seal off their gills. I guess that’s handy if you like killing crustaceans in shallow tidal environments. The shock on the guides’ and fellow anglers’ faces when I arrived back on the mothership that day to a disgusted welcome, soon gave way to fascination as the almost four-hour long gyotaku process began. As luck would have it, the only humid day in Sudan we’d experience that trip would be this one. Preparing and pinning the fish was hell in the thick wet air. It didn’t help the bamboo paper either.

“Luck” and “triggers” are two words that generally don’t coexist in the same sentence.

My favourite Maldivian moment happened on my final day. The two-week trip had been characterised by shoddy weather and empty water in what was very much a “you should have been here in February” thing. I had known that going there in November was a risk, but I figured it would be worth it, not even thinking about the swell.

Local guide Mohamed and I had decided to spend this last day trying our luck at teasing up some wahoo. After two hours of trolling without a look on the teasers, we spotted a shoal of yellowfin tuna porpoising along. Mohamed ran ahead and cut the motors. The fish moved too quickly for us and diverged at the last second. I asked Mohamed to try to get ahead but, as he cranked, I heard the starter motor again complaining at the lack of cranking amps. It was my last day of fishing. We’d broken down the previous day and had had plenty motor trouble the day before that. On finding out that Mohamed had again forgotten to fix the issue or bring a spare battery, I went nuclear. I was about to lose my second day of fishing in a row and the last day at that. The most important day.

We sat at anchor as he tried to call for help. We didn’t have enough anchor rope either and, as we drifted towards the massive reef break with an anchor dangling into the abyss, I packed everything in my waterproof pack and broke down my rods preparing for what was going to be a pretty shit swim. With over six feet of shore break dumping onto fire coral, I knew I was going to come out looking like Mick Hucknall after a bike accident. To our combined relief, the anchor caught the first patch of reef as we felt the swells. The anxiety faded. An hour or so later help did arrive and towed us into a small commercial harbour. I apologised to Mohamed for my conduct earlier, explaining my anger. I then decided to go for a walk behind the harbour, the verse about “the right way to hunt” from Hemingway’s The Green Hills of Africa running through my mind.

It was now too deep to fish any flats, the pushing tide had been fleeting, but I’d spotted the milky water off this commercial harbour on a previous run and I’d commented to my fishing buddy, Andreas, that it absolutely stank of permit. I know predators love that sort of structure for ambush and that type of water had produced so well for me before. It was a weird environment to fish. Behind me, like a scene from WALL-E , a nearly-rusted-to-death excavator lifted and dropped enormous rocks. As I fished I was flanked by various Indian gentlemen, squatting and having a chat among the very out of place pine trees on top of the boulder outcrop they’d created.

The commotion was obviously fairly regular as, seemingly undisturbed, in the channel I could make out the shape of a very large yellow margin triggerfish. It was just beyond the milky water, in the clear of the pumping current. He was clearly inspecting something on the bottom, his body cocked slightly vertical but into the current.

Some previous bad luck (losing all my leader material when a leader holder failed) meant that all I had was the very stiff 22lb hard fluoro leader Andreas had left behind when he’d returned to South Africa, and some 40lb leader. The wading in Maldives is super-deep so, a few nights earlier, I’d stuffed some Flexos with tungsten beads to get them down before triggers could spot them. I picked the heaviest of the lot, a tungsten dumbbell into which I’d stuffed 3 x 3mm tungsten beads.

Aware of this particular destination’s sensitivity to flies landing, I cast way up-current testing the sink and distance. There was a lot of current, probably six knots, and I figured the fish would never be happy with a presentation in this situation, as anything on the bottom would be tumbled along. On the second cast I managed to get it into the fish’s feeding lane. As it got close, I noticed the tailing fish level itself off in a reaction to something. It was deep water, maybe three metres, so watching the body language was not easy. I decided to do a short strip to test if the change was a result of my offering. Amazingly, the fish charged and ate straight away. I set as hard as I would for a GT and held, knowing there was, at best, a very slim chance of landing the fish.

Beside the current I had to deal with, there was a series of coral heads about half a fly line off. Triggers pay attention in geography class. “Here comes trouble,” I thought, as fly line went on the reel and the fish attempted its departure. I turned the drag knob to a point I knew to be around 18lb (about 60% drag on the Hardy Fortuna x2). That’s an uncomfortable amount of drag for any fight and beyond what’s possible on any cork draw bar drag, but I knew I couldn’t let this fish stretch its legs. I held and hoped my knots would last and nothing would part. I’ve pulled triggers this hard in Kiribati, and its biggest fish had been unstoppable against 20lb leader. This Maldivian fish kept pulling bits of fly line, the reel audibly resisting with each erratic quarter turn.

I jumped up on a rock immediately to my right and got a visual. It was about three metres from its intended bunker. The tug of war was on! I couldn’t let it run any more. With the rod amusingly flat for a crab eater, I could feel the line stretch and give way and so I locked up to 30-and-some pounds. I knew the bastard was winning, but he’d have to break me off now. No more line allowed. And then my rival made a rare mistake. Sensing less resistance on his starboard, the fish shot off towards me hoping, I suspect, to get under the rock I was on. Here was his critical error. I’d been so clumsy in leopard seal-ing myself onto said rock that the entire area in front of it was silted up beyond the normal current line, as well as the entire bay that contained me.

As my adversary entered the milky water, I could see confusion in its movements. I pulled hard to get it further into my manmade advantage and it tried two direction changes looking for clearer water. It then popped up to the surface for a look. I’ve seen big parrotfish do this as a tactic, and I know from experience that the moment is fleeting and is not the end of the fight. Yet it is an opportunity, and you can take serious advantage as they don’t get purchase from the surface. So, in a rare moment of coordination, I jumped in and netted it from underneath in a single movement. Not able to see my net in the milky water, it was an easier-than-expected death to the fight. What I saw in the net was awesome, an absolute giant of a yellow margin. Not as fat as the Kiribati fish, but long and perfect. I’ve fought my fair share of XXXL triggers, and I know how rare landing one this much bigger than normal is.

I spent the next while jumping around like a TikTok star getting some self-timer shots before a construction worker helped me with the release shots, amused at my excitement. Sitting in the water with it then, I couldn’t help but admire it. As Nicola would say, this was a truly satanic papaya. The luck I needed had finally arrived.