There were not a lot of Indigenous anglers around Kingscliff in the 1960s. There were more in the commercial fishing ranks. These included some who were net fishermen and some who were extremely good at catching beach worms. The few that I had the pleasure to know were generous with their time and wonderfully considerate when teaching, which they were prepared to do whenever asked. Three I remember extremely well.
Siddy Watego was unbelievably patient as he helped me eradicate the errors in my worming technique. These errors were serious. They were mainly the result of me not taking enough sand in my grasp for the worm. Every time I saw Siddy on the beach—just north of the rocks was one of his favourite areas—he would encourage me to try some slight adjustment to the two-handed technique he had helped me improve greatly. Even when I was clearly not worming and just walking past he would try to give me at least a couple of worms, just in case. ‘You never know when a few worms might come in handy? Every fisherman should have some. They can turn an ordinary fisherman into a good one.’
I would frequently stop, primarily just to chat and to watch him worm. He was extremely good. Over the years I have realised how much I enjoy watching any practitioner who is truly expert at what they do, particularly if it has something to do with fish. Quite a few fish filleters have had to put up with my attention. While I was watching Siddy, we chatted. Fishing was usually the subject.
In response to a question from Siddy one May day, in 1963 I think, on how the fishing was lately, I replied that it was not great. There was not much about except lots of drummer: I had caught thirty-odd in a fishing competition the previous Sunday morning. I normally only fished for drummer in competitions. I had been told they were not great to eat, an opinion supported by the refusal of my fishmongers to buy them. Siddy’s surprise was obvious. ‘I think they are great eating, provided you bleed and gut them immediately you catch them and that you fillet and skin them before cooking.’ My interest intensified when he continued, ‘I don’t have any trouble selling them. My customers love them. I can’t get enough.’ I informed him of what I had been told by my fish merchants and the difficulty of getting them to buy drummer because they were not good to eat. ‘I’ve heard that. But it’s simply not true. In any case I don’t sell them as drummer.’ In response to the obvious question, ‘I sell them as black snapper. I have never had a single complaint.’
Thanks to Siddy I learnt how good drummer can be to eat. A bit variable, almost certainly related to what they have been eating recently, but when they are good they are very good.
Frank Perandis taught me to catch worms one-handed. I always thought it was hard enough with two hands and if Siddy used two hands that was good enough for me. But Frank persisted in espousing the benefits of his technique. He really wanted to teach me. By holding the pippi between ring finger and thumb and using your first and second fingers to go behind the worm and into the sand and then back towards your thumb it did become surprisingly easy. Provided you had a good teacher.
Of course, the real advantage of the one-handed technique was that it freed up your other hand completely. This enabled the practitioner to carry a much larger bucket than could be comfortably carried on a rope around the waist. The advantage of the larger bucket was that it could carry more water. This was kinder to the worms that were in it. As a result, the quality of the saleable product was improved.
But I continued to find it difficult to catch in one hand the really big ‘king’ worms that I used for jewfish. They were so strong it was difficult enough for me to apply sufficient pressure even with the double-handed technique. Justified by the fact that Siddy used two hands, I eventually reverted to my old habit.
Billy Wogis was another truly wonderful character. He was, I guess, maybe six or eight years older than me. He fished the rocks regularly, but not at the times most fishers frequented the best spots. To those who did not know him well, he appeared much more lackadaisical than the average committed angler. But, as I was to learn, he simply prioritised different aspects of fishing. He was passionate about the types of fishing that were his priorities.
Billy would normally arrive at the rocks late morning and leave midto late afternoon. Gentlemen’s hours. Almost exclusively on days when the weather was kind. Round Rock was by far his favourite spot and autumn his favourite season. He was at his most relaxed after anchoring a strip of fresh mullet he had just jagged, as far as possible straight out in front of The Rock. And Billy could cast a long way. He would then sit back on one of the ledges that made The Rock such a wonderfully social place to fish. I came to greatly enjoy the same practice. Sitting next to Billy on a beautiful warm autumn day and having a chat while we waited for a tailor to make a mistake was about as relaxing, and as enjoyable, as it gets.
With Billy’s guidance my appreciation of this fabulous place increased greatly. Simply observing the ocean and its contents and learning from every experience was enough; almost.
In late April and May tailor often did make a mistake in the middle of the day. This is the time of the sea-mullet run. Big schools of mullet usually ran wide, but small schools would frequently hole-up in the back of No Hopers, right next to Round Rock. I would watch them for hours as they lazily flopped about in the relative serenity of that location. Occasionally there would be excitement as they scattered to avoid a predator, usually a tailor or two but sometimes a big GT or kingfish.
A bait behind such a school had a very good chance of being eaten by a sizeable tailor. The ones we caught in these sessions were usually between 3 and 4 pounds. They were big enough to be interested in large sea mullet. We seldom caught a lot; a couple each in three or four hours was more than adequate reward. Just being there was almost enough.
It was on two of those fabulous autumn days with a light westerly, a calm to moderate sea and beautifully clear blue water (tailor blue, we used to call it) that I was to receive a couple of fishing lessons.
Billy was more deliberate than slow in the way he fished. His gear was always beautifully maintained. He even made his own reels, which he honed with his lathe from a solid piece of cedar or camphor laurel, if I remember correctly. One peculiarity was that he only ever had one handle on his reels. I never understood why, because for me it left the reel unbalanced. Obviously, Billy had a reason that I assume had a sound basis. I found this to be the one component of Billy’s knowledge that was a bit difficult to accept.
The homemade tailor spinners that hung in Billy’s creel always looked like they were brand new. He hammered them from lead, and they were longer and slimmer, more like a carpenter’s pencil, than the ones I poured into a coffin-shaped mould. Billy attached only one hook to his spinners, where I had three independently suspended hooks. Over the years we discussed the advantage of the extra casting distance he could get from the more streamlined hardware versus my belief that three hooks gave me more success at getting tailor to stay hooked. The percentage of tailor that got off the relatively heavy spinners we used caused both of us considerable angst.
It was clear Billy put a great deal of thought into his gear and how he caught his fish. And he obviously got a lot of enjoyment out of doing it his way. He was never hurried. He was a very efficient fisherman. He was similarly not extravagant with words. He was very quietly spoken, and he used to great effect an amazingly persistent but flexible smile. The combination was disarming.
Billy did not readily delve into deep discussion; brief comments on some positive aspect of our immediate surroundings tended to dominate. But over the years we became good friends and our discussions intensified.
One afternoon while sitting on The Rock I told Billy that I was planning to go and fish for a snapper in Snapper Hole in an hour or so. I explained that I had caught a nice snapper the evening before. I thought that I could have caught more but the ‘pickers’ had driven me mad; I could not keep my fillet of tailor on for more than a couple of minutes. Whereas this problem with ‘pickers’ was common in relatively shallow, foamy water, such as in The Alley, it was unusual for Snapper Hole. Billy initially just smiled. A few seconds later, ‘I could help you solve that problem.’ I was all ears. ‘You need to use octopus for bait. Snapper love it and it is so tough bream and other pickers can’t get it off.’ I was aware of these properties of octopus, but it was not a bait I had seen used to great effect. I had an inherent bias against it: it was so tough how could a fish enjoy eating it? Anyway, where was I to get an octopus in the next hour? ‘I can almost certainly solve that part of the problem,’ said Billy in almost a whisper, accompanied by an even bigger-than-usual smile.
‘But I will only help you on two conditions. The first is that if I teach you how to catch octopus you never take more than one a day. They are not super abundant, and I want to be able to catch one the next time I need one. In any case you get eight baits out of each one and they are so tough you will only lose a bait if you lose your hook. You do not need more than one. The second condition is that you must not tell anybody else the locations of the octopus holes I show you.’
We wound our lines in. Billy cut two 2-inch pieces of mullet and put them in his bait bucket. We then set off towards The Alley. We walked out on the rocks to where the wave action surged back and forth around our feet. Billy took his shirt off and then selected one of the pieces of mullet. He rubbed it over his right arm up to the elbow. He then set it in the palm of his right hand. He closed his fist around it. He then knelt, straddling a large crevice through which the water was flowing with every surge. He pointed out that there were quite a few crab shells at the bottom, an indication of octopus activity.
‘Now you have to put your arm as far as possible up the crevice into the bit where you cannot see. This is where the octopus lives.’ This he proceeded to do until he was up to his shoulder in the hole. His neck was pressed against the rock. ‘Now you have to coax him out. You do this by gently, repeatedly, squeezing the piece of fish in your hand, under water; and you wait.’ In less than thirty seconds he looked at me with a particularly big smile. ‘There’s one in here.’ Less than a minute later he stood as he pulled his arm from the crevice. Wrapped around his fist and his lower arm was a large octopus, its tentacles at least 18 inches long. He immediately put the fingers of his left hand into its gills and with a flick of both hands he turned its head inside out. He then swung it hard into the rock, to kill it as quickly as he could. I was most impressed. He then gave the still writhing and slimy animal to me to hold. I was less impressed. I knew very little about octopus, except that they had beaks and I had been told they could bite.
‘Now it’s your turn.’ I was worried he might say that. I now had an octopus; why did I need to catch another one? Billy was determined. He moved straight to another crevice where he confirmed, by the presence of rock-crab shells, that there was an octopus in residence. Off with my shirt and into my hand went the piece of mullet. I then had to rub the mullet up my arm to the elbow. Billy pointed out the hole into which I was expected to put one of my only two arms!
It got worse. ‘When you get your hand in as far as you can, start squeezing the fish. Pretty soon you will feel a tentacle or two on your hand. Don’t panic, or even flinch. Keep your fist closed and keep gently squeezing the piece of fish. You will feel the octopus climb up your arm trying to get access to the fish. He can smell it on your arm. Wait until you can feel him right up to your elbow. By then he will have moved at least most of his tentacles from the rocks onto your arm. The thick end of each tentacle will be level with your hand. When you can feel the octopus all around your arm open your fist and grab the thickest part of the closest tentacle. Take hold as tight as you possibly can and immediately pull hard and stand up at the same time.’ Easy really! I looked at Billy. ‘I thought octopus could bite?’ ‘Not often.’ Hardly reassuring!
Actually, I was amazed at how easy it was, once you got over the ‘joy’ of having an octopus crawl up your arm. We let the one I caught go. One would be enough for both of us.
Billy led me back over towards Round Rock where he pointed out two crevices that he assured me would have octopus in them. ‘That’s enough. You should be able to find your own holes now.’
For the next five or so years I was able to get an octopus every time I needed one. I used the ones I caught almost exclusively for snapper bait. Most Australians did not eat octopus in those days. They, together with squid, were popularly given the derogatory and racist title of ‘Wog food’. How ignorant were we back then? Not everything about fishing was better in the good old days.
From the perspective of catching octopus by hand, one advantage of being ignorant in the 1960s was that we hadn’t even heard of the blue-ringed octopus. So we remained blissfully ignorant of the possible presence of a potential killer in these rock crevices. I never did see one around the Kingscliff rocks. I was told that Kingscliff was too far north for them. But I did hear a story about a boy playing with a little blueish octopus in one of the holes in the rocks. Apparently nothing sinister happened.
With the benefit of hindsight, I realise that not only did I delay the wonderful culinary experience of steamed or barbecued octopus but I also did not take the opportunity to use them as bait for jewfish as often as I should have. For some reason I had not overcome the ‘knowledgeable’ advice from some of my elders that jewfish did not really like octopus. On many nights bream and/or butterfish drove me mad when I was using cut tailor to fish in The Alley for jewfish. I frequently ran out of bait, or gave up in frustration. Years later I was to realise that a tentacle, or even half a fresh, small octopus, would have done the trick. This was after Billy Smith told me of the great success some Italian guys were having using octopus on the walls at the mouth of the Richmond River. Of course, octopus was also reusable. If I caught a jewfish on an octopus tentacle the tentacle was not seriously damaged by the experience. All you had to do was set the hook straight in the bait and throw it out again.
Until very recently I honoured my promises to Billy Wogis. I never took more than one octopus at a time and I never told a soul about his crevices, or even the other ones I later found. And I never taught anybody the technique. But years later I did talk to the odd fishing colleague about the wonderful experience Billy had given me. There is no worry now about confidentiality as all of Billy’s and my favorite crevices are under 6 feet or more of sand that followed the rock walls seawards at the mouth of the creek. The great majority of the fabulous and unique intertidal habitat that was perfect for lots of creatures, including octopus, and as a result made the Kingscliff rocks what they were in the good old days, has been lost forever in the name of development.
On another of those highly addictive autumn days, Billy and I got to discussing red bass (later to be known as mangrove jacks). I had caught one about 3 pounds the day before. Catching one around Kingscliff was an acknowledged feat back then. Red bass were already considered special: they were not that common, they were attractive fish, they grew quite large for an estuarine species, they were hard to catch, they fought very hard, they had sharp teeth, they hung around rocks and used them as defence when hooked, and they were good to eat. They represented one of the ultimate challenges for an angler. They still do. But with modern lures, gear improvements and publicised practices a lot more are caught. I asked Billy if he ever caught them. Billy’s wonderful, self-assured smile left me anticipating another positive, and likely innovative, response. I was not to be disappointed.
After his usual considered pause, ‘Yeah, I catch a few.’ He knew from my obvious expectation that I anticipated more. ‘But I don’t fish for them the same way as you do.’ Where and how, were my obvious questions. Billy was silent for a while. He was weighing up whether he would answer. I didn’t care if I had to plead, I had to find out Billy’s secrets for catching red bass. After a longer than usual pause, ‘I use a bow and arrow.’
I thought this time he really was having a lend of me. I think I had ever only caught three red bass in all the fishing I did in and around the Kingscliff rocks and the Cudgen Creek. I hadn’t seen more than these three caught in the area, even though I did hear of the occasional capture on live poddy mullet. I had never seen one swimming in the water, even before I caught it. They lived in deep water close to rocks, so how could you possibly catch them with a bow and arrow? It was surely not practical! I had to fight my disbelief. Billy realised this: he had expected it; that special smile, and the silence, gave that away. I waited.
‘You know that swamp behind the Catholic Church?’ he asked. Surely, he could not catch red bass in there! There was only about a foot, 2 at the most, of very heavily tea-tree stained water in it. ‘Well that’s where I start. I wade around with a bucket with a lid on it and I half-fill it with green tree frogs; there are thousands of them in there.’ I had been tramping around in that swamp once, or maybe twice, and I did see a few green tree frogs, but I also saw a couple of green tree snakes. It was an impressive wetland, but it did not hold a lot of attraction for me as a place to fish, or even to get bait. Putting your hand in an octopus hole was one thing, but doing battle with snakes was testing my acceptance of Indigenous fishing practices.
Once he had his dozen or more frogs from the swamp, Billy would go to the rocks on the north side of the bridge over the creek. From memory, I believe he rode a pushbike. Here, as he explained, he would set up station with his bow and arrow. He described in detail how he would select a really stable rock platform on which to stand. He would then load his bow with the selected arrow and hold it in one hand. With the other he would throw a frog to a precise spot in the creek, initially towards the middle of the span of the bridge. On hitting the water the frog would immediately do a Leisel Jones (Australia’s Olympic gold medallist in breaststroke) impersonation as it took off for the nearest structure above water level. Billy would train his arrow on the frog and maintain the highest possible level of readiness. Then, if and when a bass smashed the surface as it inhaled the frog he would send the arrow on its way. Exceptional reflexes were key to success. If a bass did not worry the frog, which happened more times than the alternative, Billy waited until the frog reached the safety of the rocks. He then picked it up and put it back in the bucket. It might get another swim later if its turn came up. If not, it would be returned to the swamp after the fishing was over. He had to ride past it on his way home.
I had no idea how good Billy was with a bow and arrow, but having seen his attention to fishing gear and his ability to handle it there was good reason to be very confident. ‘But Billy, even when the bass takes the frog you must miss a lot.’ ‘Yeah.’ And with the biggest grin yet, and perhaps even a little giggle, ‘But I don’t always miss.’ Another long pause. And then, ‘I don’t need many; they tend to be good size; about 5 or even 6 pounds.’
He had fishing line tied to the arrows which had a barb behind the head, so retrieving the arrows when he missed was relatively simple. If there was a bass attached when he retrieved it, that could be a lot more fun. In Billy’s considered fashion, when he got one bass he usually went home. But in his also unique style, including the infectious smile, he did admit that if he got one in the first couple of shots, the temptation to stay a little longer was strong. It was after all great fun. Plus, like all sportsmen at the cutting edge, he needed to practise.
Animal rights activism and political correctness associated with using native animals for live bait would today raise some questions about Billy’s adventure. But was it significantly different to using live mullet to catch jewfish? And we still do that! There is little worry anyway; Billy’s bass ‘fishing’ exploits would be impossible to repeat exactly: the swamp where the frogs were to be found has, like the octopus habitat, been almost totally removed in the interests of politically correct, or at least politically sanctioned, development. The little that remains is scheduled to be filled in as part of the next round of the ‘development’ of Kingscliff.