A majestic afternoon in late January 1964. The light southerly wind was enough to keep the hard-gut mullet running and the sea big enough for heavy foam to shroud the Kingscliff rocks. The water on The South End was as deep as I had seen it in years. A jewfish fishing addict could not ask for more. This was my fix.
As I arrived at the rocks a sizeable school of mullet, of the order of 500 fish, was moving in to a large hole on the beach just south of the south-west corner of the rocks. This area was usually sand about 3 feet above high tide level. It was now water 3 feet or more below low tide level. I had not seen the water around the rocks so deep since 1956.
Three of the Murwillumbah regulars were fishing The Alley. They had caught a few bream and a nice drummer but were about to give it away for the day. After a very brief chat I headed off to the beach to jag some of the mullet from the school that was growing rather quickly and was now very obvious. By the time I had jagged about a dozen mullet the school decided it had had enough of me menacing its members. The consensus among its constituents was obviously that it was time to resume the migration north. They slowly headed in that direction. I watched, with great anticipation, as they left their resting place. The school gradually increased its pace as it headed seawards. The speed was indicative of the shared confidence given by the relative individual safety in numbers. I ran quickly out onto the rocks to see what would transpire. I was hoping the school would not find the transit to the deep waters of Snapper Hole uneventful.
As the mullet passed where I was standing they began to show the tell-tale signs of an impending threat, or threats. The backs of the mullet began to break the surface and their swimming speed picked up. The school clearly portrayed the nervousness of its constituents as they continued to push into the foam. Then the switch was thrown; the whole scene erupted. There were mullet flying through the air and scurrying helter-skelter across the surface in all directions. Some even landing on the rocks just below where I was standing. There was one big splash as a jewfish made its claim for a meal. A significant part of the mullet school continued to push seawards, where the apparent carnage continued. The stragglers beat a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the hole near the beach. They would have to wait until their numbers built up even more before they again attempted to pass this particular obstacle.
I had an adrenaline rush that might have seriously damaged an older person. The ambush that was being played out right at my feet was a real-time expression of the dangers of life for a fish and the brutality of survival in the ocean. For an avid fisherman it was a real-life fantasy. I had to get into the action; and quickly. I cast a look at my companions. I was pleased they were oblivious to this action extravaganza and continued packing up their gear. The prospect of having the rocks and the excitement I was witnessing to myself heightened my anticipation. Company was not something I needed if I was to get the most out of my afternoon. I quickly rigged my gear. I then waited the minute or so until my colleagues were about 200 yards down the beach. I attached a mullet to my 9/0 Sealey and advanced to action stations.
Just as I was about to cast, a much smaller school of mullet, about fifty fish, swam into the danger zone. These were given the same welcome, but as there were fewer of them the school did not have the collective confidence to push on. They spun around and with great haste headed back towards the relative safety of the beach. From their behaviour it was obvious a jewfish, or two, was not far behind.
My cast hit the water right in the middle of the ‘bull-ring’. I was extremely confident of a bite. I had good reason to be. My mullet immediately went ballistic. It was aware of the danger. I was right to be expectant. The wait was less than twenty seconds.
The tick as my bait was inhaled was as sharp as I had ever felt. The transmission up my line of tail-beats from my mullet ceased instantly. As my line steadily tightened, I had the considered impression that the weight on the end was more solid than usual. In response to the slow but heavy and determined pull on my rod, I dropped its angle to about thirty degrees above the horizontal, then struck, hard. A split second later the slow heavy weight turned into that of the back of a bus moving at some considerable speed. My 33-pound line was going to be seriously tested. It was. And it was found wanting. I could not hold the fish at all and it was around the corner of Snapper Rock in a very small number of seconds. Immediately I felt the scrape of my line on the barnacles. A second or two later my fish was free of any threat from me. The whole encounter had probably lasted less than five seconds; definitely less than ten.
I had been ‘done over’ by big jewfish in this location many times before but this was different. It was really no contest; as my father would say of lopsided sporting events, ‘it wasn’t a game, it was a shame’. But even though I had lost badly I couldn’t wait to try again. My heart was still racing, and my enthusiasm was, if anything, heightened.
As I wound my line in, I began to wonder what I could do differently. Apart from trying to pull harder and not give away so much line, not a lot came to mind. It is extremely difficult to break a 33-pound line with your rod in the air, so in theory all I had to do was keep my rod up. With the tremendous power off the mark of a really big jewfish, the only way this would be possible would be by reducing the pressure on my reel and letting out more line. This practice has very serious limitations in this location; if I let the fish run freely I would simply get cut off on the rocks. One thing was not an option: I could not simply hang on and let my rod be pulled down so that my line pointed straight at the fish. With such big fish the line would quickly break. So obviously I simply had to pull harder with my rod in the air, or at least above the horizontal. I had plenty of hooks and sinkers, eight more at last count, and time was on my side; it was not yet even four o’clock.
Two minutes later my second mullet landed in the water. This time I had cast almost underarm, so my bait was little more than two rod lengths from the edge of the rock I was standing on. I had done this so that any fish I hooked would have to swim at least 10 yards further than the first one before it rounded Snapper Rock. I thought this would give me a better chance of stopping it before it reached the danger zone.
Less than a minute later and my incredible adrenaline rush was repeated. Another unbelievable tick had triggered it. Then another rapidly accelerating bus, more reel spinning at worrying speed, more anxiety, followed by frustration at my inability to be an equal participant in the contest. Another yard or two of chaffed line and another lost hook and sinker.
There was no doubt the fishing was exciting, but it appeared extremely unlikely it would become rewarding, at least in terms of a conquest. I simply must come up with a new strategy. The idea of doubling my line occurred to me, but I was not convinced I could do it successfully. Best to just try again. Maybe I would get lucky and a smaller jewie might come along! Something in the 25- to 35-pound range and I would likely trouble the scorer. Even up to 45 pounds I would have a good chance.
The next short throw produced perhaps an even quicker bite. I thought this fish must have been attracted by the splash as my mullet landed. A truly magnificent ‘tick’. The same immediate slow but determined pull. Until I struck. Then the same unbridled power of the take-off. Magnificent, but almost frightening in its determination and domination.
The abject failure of my first two efforts led to the decision to let this one run freely into Snapper Hole and then take up the fight. It was easy to strike and then let my reel spin with only moderate pressure. The fish did its part and quickly reached Snapper Hole. Immediately I felt my line chafing on the corner of the rock it had run past. I reduced the pressure to minimal and it just kept motoring, presumably straight out to sea. But the cause of my problem did not move. The rock my line was around stayed where it was. Even with much less pressure on the line there was still the violent shakes of a huge head threatening my attachment to this huge fish. It did not take long before round three was over. It had gone longer than the first two but it was still very one-sided. Another early-round knockout.
Over the next year or two I ascertained that if The South End was particularly deep the chances of getting cut off as the fish rounded the corner actually went up. I presume an extra bit of particularly sharp rock became exposed above the sand at about the height the line would be as the fish rounded the corner and dived into the deeper water of Snapper Hole. I did not know this at this time, but it was information that was of no material value to me then anyway.
Rounds four to eight produced minor variations on the same themes. I never waited more than a minute for a bite. I tried pulling as hard as I could, I tried letting them run into Snapper Hole; but no matter what I did, I was never really in the contest. For round nine, my last hook, I decided to declare the contest on with the fish as close as possible to where I was standing. I would then just pull as hard as I could.
I cast very short. I struck as soon as I felt the tick. I pulled with all my might with my rod at about forty-five degrees. Excess adrenaline probably resulted in a superhuman effort, for me at least. For a second I thought I had found the answer. My fish was facing towards me as I struck and it took a moment for it to turn around. As I was already pulling as hard as I could with my rod relatively low, I made some headway. I was sure that I got a yard or two of line, perhaps a fraction more, off the fish. Progress! Had I had a bigger line this might well have translated into a winning strategy. But after its initial inertia there was an enormous shake of this fish’s huge head. Because of my strategy of minimising the distance between me and the fish there was very little stretch in the small amount of line between us. The trauma transmitted through my line and rod from this incredible head shake made me pause to check that I was still connected. By the time I ascertained that indeed I was, the huge full-moon tail and long willowy body had exploded into action. The fish was headed for Snapper Hole with fabulous speed and power. In a second the fish had overcome the initial temporary disadvantage. Normal service had been resumed.
I had had nine throws. I had nine incredible bites. The tick from each was so strong that each mullet had obviously been ‘sucked in’ powerfully; probably from some distance. Two of the ticks were so sharp they actually flicked the line off my finger that was there to guide it onto the reel. In the many years of my live-bait fishing for jewies I only recall this ever happening to me on one other occasion (this was actually also on The South End of the Kingscliff rocks when there was big school of whiting in the corner and I had a particularly big and lively one on my line). These were very hungry, exceptionally big fish. I hooked every bite I had, even though I struck several of them the instant they touched my bait. This was in stark contrast to my normal hook-up rate of not much more than 50 per cent, even after waiting for them to turn around and head away from me. I have little doubt every one had swallowed the mullet in the process of first contact. They were all obviously very big to extremely big jewfish. With the benefit of hindsight, what should I have done differently? After the first one or two, I probably should have just let them run into Snapper Hole and taken the chance the line would not hook up on the rocks on the way. Or maybe come free before chaffing through. Obviously trying to ‘man-handle’ them aggressively through the rocky area did not work.
How big were they?
I thought long and hard about this question at the time. Re-analyses of the exact events continued for years; they still do. In my deliberations are the many years of my jewfish fishing and the hundreds of jewfish I have caught, including one of a fraction over 70 pounds and another of 60 pounds and quite a few over 50 pounds. But the two biggest were off the beach on 18-pound line, and they are of little relevance to my attempts to land big fish off The South End of the Kingscliff rocks. There are, however, two incidents at other locations that are prominent in my analyses.
The first was a catch of three jewfish in one evening by my father’s uncle, Cyril Halpin. These three were taken on Tallow Beach just below Cape Byron in about 1936 (truly the good old days). Cyril ran a men’s wear shop in Byron Bay before the continuing decline in the population of the Bay that followed the closure of the whaling station and the abattoirs triggered his move to Tweed Heads, where for many years he ran the same type of business: Halpin’s Menswear. He was a handline fisherman, regarded by my father, my only witness, to be an exceptionally good one. Just below the Cape was his favourite jewfish spot. On this particular day he had been fishing off the rocks for bream when a huge school of enormous jewfish came up the beach just behind the surf zone and then appeared to settle just outside the break immediately south of the headland. Cyril saw them clearly. He immediately went home to get his jewfish gear and some yellowtail for bait, his favourite for jewies.
His jewfish-line was 80 yards of ‘Cherry Blossom’ Japanese gut wound onto a large cube of cork; quality nylon lines were not yet readily available. Dad did not know how strong the line was, but he accepted it had to have been more than 50 pounds. I was to conclude it had to have been considerably more. Cyril’s feats with it suggested it must have been closer to 100 pounds.
Dad had been jewfish fishing with Cyril numerous times and he loved to tell me how Cyril would fix a large sinker and hook and half a yellowtail, split lengthwise, onto the line. He would then methodically pull all the line off the cork and place the cork up the beach with the rest of his gear. He would walk to the water’s edge swing the line around his head about four times, letting out a little more line each time, then throw the line seawards. He would immediately run up the beach and grab his cork as he would invariable cast all his line out. Dad went to great length to describe how Cyril’s casting differed from everybody else’s. He said Cyril threw it out like somebody throwing a cricket ball from the fence to over the stumps. He did not simply swing it around his head and let it go at the right time, as we mere mortals do. I can still see Dad with his arm above his shoulder and his fist spring open as he tried to demonstrate Cyril’s singular action.
For many years I had trouble believing that Cyril could have cast a handline the distances Dad credited him with. I had never seen anybody do it. I had not seen him catch the snapper off the Hastings Point rocks that Dad reported and Cyril himself confirmed. I did not fully understand the technique that made it possible. But when fishing off the rocks in New Caledonia for Spanish mackerel in 1980 I was given a real-life demonstration.
There was a very tall Martinique man fishing from the oyster-covered rocks about 20 yards from me. He was using about a 40-pound handline and casting a 2- or 3-ounce chrome DAM spoon. I found the distance he was casting incredible. It appeared to be all made possible by the wonderfully athletic slinging action that completed the final swirl of the line above his head. It was the embodiment of what Dad had tried to demonstrate. I was further impressed when he caught four Spanish mackerel of between 14 and 18 pounds. He handled a handline beautifully. I caught only two mackerel that morning casting unweighted large garfish on my 13-foot Sportex glass rod and 13-pound line.
Back to the evening Cyril was fishing on the beach below the Cape. He caught three jewfish and they each weighed over 60 pounds cleaned. The first two he caught on yellowtail and the third on the swim-bladder of one of the earlier two. He said it was so easy to get a bite that he thought he would give a new bait a try. The only reason he did not catch more was that he had to carry them home. The big school of extremely large jewfish he had seen had obviously hung about.
The second incident was well recorded. It was a single haul of 22 tons of jewfish taken by Vince Jordan and his beach-haul crew at Hat Head (mid-north coast of NSW) in 1963. I first heard of the catch on the ABC Radio North Coast News as my good friend Tony Hardge was driving us from university in Armidale to Scotts Head to go fishing. The biggest of Vince’s catch was 108 pounds, the smallest a little over 40 pounds. The median size was well over 70 pounds. This was only a year before my own adventure with exceptionally big jewies.
Years later I became very good friends with Vince Jordan. He was one of the best commercial fishermen ever to fish in NSW. And he was a truly lovely and generous man. He served for many years on numerous committees for NSW Department of Fisheries. In the latter years of his life I felt embarrassed to call and see him in his shop at Hat Head as he always insisted I take, at no cost, considerable quantities of garfish or white pilchards that he or his son had caught and he had for sale. I pleaded with him to let me pay, without much luck. But I found his excessive generosity difficult to refuse. The problem was that his product was much better than I could buy anywhere else. Any decent fisherman knows the power of extremely good bait. I really wanted it, but how to get Vince to accept a decent amount of money for it remained an issue. We eventually reached a compromise. And we had a lot of fun over the years jokingly revisiting the issue.
On numerous occasions we discussed that haul of jewfish. It was a seminal episode in Vince’s life. It wasn’t just because of the thrill and grandeur of this unparalleled fishing experience. At the time he had only recently married and the money from the sale of this one catch paid, among other things, for the deposit on his first home. Not surprisingly he remembered this astounding event extremely well. He did not tire of my questions about it. It always brought a smile to his face to be able to describe the event, in considerable detail, to an avid student. Like most great fishing stories I never tired of repeat presentations.
It happened back in the good old days, but he remembered it very clearly. From first seeing the huge school of fish off the north side of the impressive Hat Head headland to trying to be certain what species it was: weren’t they too big to be jewfish? There was nothing else they could be! Was his special jewfish net long enough to be able to surround them? Was it strong enough?
Because of the distances involved he actually made the initial shot with his much longer and finer tailor net. He encircled the school and very slowly encouraged it closer to the beach. Extreme caution was necessary. He could see from the size of the fish, which he was now certain were jewfish, that should they get excited and make a charge for freedom they would easily burst through the smaller mesh and finer twine of the tailor net. As soon as the school was within range, he very gently rowed the much stronger jewfish net just inside the perimeter of the other net, around the school. The second part of the task had been accomplished.
He now had to turn this exceptionally large catch of fish, individuals of which were bigger than the average fish-and-chip shop owner knew how to handle, into cash. Hat Head might consume one! He initially sent the fish to the Sydney Fish Market, but there was seriously inadequate demand even at Australia’s biggest fish outlet. His anxiety was relieved greatly when he found a buyer in Adelaide. The fish were quickly dispatched, I think by train. According to Vince, South Australians have far more experience with very large jewfish than do the fishmongers of NSW. More importantly, the ones he made contact with were prepared to pay a lot more for them; approximately twice the price he got for the few he had managed to sell in Sydney.
One first-hand experience and two from extremely reliable sources confirm that large schools of very big jewfish did at least occasionally make themselves available to be caught back in the good old days. The issue then became whether or not you were up to the challenge. Some were, and some weren’t.