They'd probably insist on it being about Thailand fishing though.

LOL sorry wasnt making any hint

was simply saying given your avid interest in fishing you may also want to check that section

(simply cos many of the local sub fora do not always come to members attention....)

To late Miggy, we're cut to the quick. (Sobs into hands).

Another example of moderator highhandedness.

:D

oh blah then if men wanna be that sensitive

LOL sorry wasnt making any hint

was simply saying given your avid interest in fishing you may also want to check that section

(simply cos many of the local sub fora do not always come to members attention....)

Thanks for the kind thought Mig.

If you go to Google Earth, 16 deg 43 minutes 25.74 seconds South, 179 deg 54 min 35 sec East, and hover about 500 feet, you will see Narewa Estate, our property back then, next door to Sau Estate. Notice a black line going out from the beach in a rough semi-circle: that is a stone wall fish trap. It is made to be covered by a couple of feet of water at high tide and encircles a few shallow rock pools at low tide. The idea is that fish swim over it at high tide and are then trapped in very shallow water at low tide. The low tide level of the pools is enough to sustain any fish trapped, but makes for easy catching if you decide to check if there is anything in there. More often than not, there is nothing worthy trapped, but occassionaly there will be a very decent fish, and a few times I have had the pleasure of pillaging sacks of parrot fish. We also used to transfer giant clams there if we found them out on the reef so that they were handy whenever we felt like having one.

Torching at night was fun. I used the coleman pressure lamp as we had no decent torch, let alone batteries! Batteries were kept for the radio so we could listen to the news and weather forcasts....and our only entertainment, the nightly radio plays that Radio Fiji had inherited from the BBC.

Can anyone imagine their family gathering around the radio avidly listening to plays that were made in the 1950's? I'm talking in the 1980's. We had no TV (Fiji had no TV then), and no electricity.

Walking through the shallows at low tide, or paddling the canoe at higher tides would reap crabs, crayfish, and a variety of reef fish. It's amazing how different the reef is at night. The colours seem to be more numerous and brighter...possibly coral polyps are nocturnal?

I would also "torch" off the edge of the reef. This was a bit scary because it involved me snorkeling in the water while pulling the canoe along which had the lamp tied to a stick at the bow. The light arc would reach the depths but would not extend very far, so my whole world was a 3 metre hemi-demisphere. Any large fish would only become visible once they were VERY close.

This is the time when you can get close to turtles. Spear-fishing at night, I would always use my home-made speargun. If I was by myself, I would not even attempt to spear a big turtle, but small ones, say up to 60 cm across, were no too difficult. Bigger turtles require 2 or 3 men to bring in: they are mighty powerful swimmers.

Anyway....snorkeling along with the canoe behind me had the advantage of having somewhere to put anything I caught....except octopus! I love eating them (but I am allergic and break out in hives if I eat too much), but I hate catching them. Tentacles everywhere, and they won't stay in the canoe. The first time I speared an octopus, I wrestled it off the spear and threw it in the bottom of the canoe unthinkingly. I carried on snorkeling and when I returned to the canoe later, the octopus was gone! Lesson learnt. Turn it inside out and bite it between the eyes....not so easy if it is big.

I need to remind myself of some tales to relate....remoras, shark fin lures, GT speared, hand spear lost in salala, somosomo reef diving, ika vaitafe, bati, balolo, palusega, giant grouper, nama..... tune in tomorrow for another episode

dam_n, I'm hopeless at finding exact lat and long on Google maps. Even downloaded a trial of the pro version of Google earth. Not to worry, I got the general picture of the area.

I'm really going to have to start reading the instructions.

If you go to Google Earth, 16 deg 43 minutes 25.74 seconds South, 179 deg 54 min 35 sec East, and hover about 500 feet, you will see Narewa Estate, our property back then, next door to Sau Estate. Notice a black line going out from the beach in a rough semi-circle: that is a stone wall fish trap. It is made to be covered by a couple of feet of water at high tide and encircles a few shallow rock pools at low tide. The idea is that fish swim over it at high tide and are then trapped in very shallow water at low tide. The low tide level of the pools is enough to sustain any fish trapped, but makes for easy catching if you decide to check if there is anything in there. More often than not, there is nothing worthy trapped, but occassionaly there will be a very decent fish, and a few times I have had the pleasure of pillaging sacks of parrot fish. We also used to transfer giant clams there if we found them out on the reef so that they were handy whenever we felt like having one.

You used to live a long way from anywhere Harcourt.

Why would you leave a paradise like that?

We also used to catch buckets of fish in the old day of N W Australia.

Trouble with catching so many was the cleaning:

We're all a lot more ecologically minded these days and wouldn't/wouldn't be able/wouldn't be allowed to, get bags like this now.

We used to jump in and pull 'em out by hand.

I'm the muscular young stud on the left, not the lunatic holding the shark. (A relatively harmless species anyway).

If you go to Google Earth, 16 deg 43 minutes 25.74 seconds South, 179 deg 54 min 35 sec East, and hover about 500 feet, you will see Narewa Estate, our property back then, next door to Sau Estate. Notice a black line going out from the beach in a rough semi-circle: that is a stone wall fish trap. It is made to be covered by a couple of feet of water at high tide and encircles a few shallow rock pools at low tide. The idea is that fish swim over it at high tide and are then trapped in very shallow water at low tide. The low tide level of the pools is enough to sustain any fish trapped, but makes for easy catching if you decide to check if there is anything in there. More often than not, there is nothing worthy trapped, but occassionaly there will be a very decent fish, and a few times I have had the pleasure of pillaging sacks of parrot fish. We also used to transfer giant clams there if we found them out on the reef so that they were handy whenever we felt like having one.

You used to live a long way from anywhere Harcourt.

Why would you leave a paradise like that?

Yeah.

It was a long way from anywhere. The next door neighbours were a good hour's walk. In Google Earth, I now see a house/houses in Sau bay around the point. They weren't there when I lived there....that would be a 20 minute walk.

To go to a doctor/post office/shop, one would have to wait for high tide (to get the boat across the reef) and good weather. Taveuni had doctor and PO and shops, traveling north up the coast about 7 miles there was a shop and copra trading station.

It was paradise, but my parents were getting on and needed to be closer to amenities, so although I loved the property, I supported their decision to sell. They emigrated back to Australia and bought a beef fattening station near Maryborough.

There were times that I would not see another living soul for weeks straight. Hence my decision to get married. I was supposed to return to Auckland for uni, but family/property obligations came first.

If I ever win lotto, I will buy the place back, or somewhere just as remote and idylic.

I was wondering why someone would get married at 18.

not see another living soul for weeks straight never occurred to me though.

Oh! OooH! I know this one! It's in Fiji! It's Harcourt's old place!

Is it my go?

I knew there'd be one! Should have known who.

The prperty was a copra plantation, but as you can see, there was not alot of coconut, mainly tropical rainforest.

Strict gun laws in Fiji meant that we were only alowed a .22 rifle and a quota of bullets (even before the coups these laws were in place). Mongoose and hawks were a problem for eating the chickens, and so we had a legitimate reason for having a firearm.

I used to hunt wild pig (yeah, with a .22!), with reasonable success, although there must be quite a few pigs die of lead poisoning after running off.

When I had no bullets, I would use a turtle spear, a sharpened 8 foot long half inch reinforcing rod. I lost that spear when I missed a goat and the spear slid off down the hillside. Never found it. As a turtle spear, it was used to harpoon turtles from the bow of a boat.

One morning, very early, I woke up and saw a small wild boar under a mango tree. I had the next door neighbours staying over and some pork would have been great. I had one bullet, and an old BSA bolt action .22 rifle. The bolt had a problem with it in that it would occassionally backfire, sending black powder particles into your face. Anyway, on this morning I went outside for my morning "shake the snake" and saw the boar. I was wearing only a sulu (sarong). I crept around behind the pig so that I was inbetween it and the jungle. It had the beach to run to. I took a shot but the rifle backfired and no effect to the pig except to startle it.

It ran left, I ran left to head it off. It ran right, I ran right. Perhaps 3 times it made a dash and each time I would head it off. By this time I was buck naked as my sulu had fallen off. My guests had come out and were watching.

The little boar, courageous thing, stood still for a few seconds, lowered it's head and charged me. As neat as a cricket batsman, I sidestepped and wacked it with the rifle on the side of it's head, bringing it down. It was more satisfying than the times I had got bigger pigs with a spear.

We ate well that night.

The jungle had plenty of hardwood trees. A tree called "vesi" was the favourite for construction. Sawn vesi is very simmilar (or perhaps identical to?) Australian jara or Indonesian Kwila in look, smell, and grain.

When my parents were still there, we started logging with pit saws.

Pit sawing is a tough job that I relished at the time, but I will never do again. Basically a 3 man job. After a tree is felled and cut to lengths, you make a sturdy platform that you use a block and tackle to drag the logs onto. One man stands on top, one man underneath, and the third man is sharpening the 2nd saw. We had one 8 foot and one 9 foot saw. You saw a length, then everyone swaps places and the saws are changed. The sharpener also has to insert a wedge into the cut once the saw cut has passed the width of the saw blade to stop the timber gripping the saw.

Once the log is squared off with the flitches discarded, you can start cutting your timber.

You sharpen a pitsaw with an ordinary flat file, and set it with a pair of pliers.

The beauty of pitsawing is that you get timber in whatever dimensions you want. You don't have to have 4 by 2, you can build your house with 5 by 3 or 3 by 1 ...whatever.

We pitsawed for 3 months, my dad, my brother, and I. We sold some timber and bought a chainsaw with an Alaskan mill attachment. Boy! Talk about easy timber after that!

Pitsawn timber is not as rough as chainsawn timber. A little bit more splintery on the surface though.

Vesi is seasoned by leaving it in the sea for a week, then putting out to dry for a few weeks.

We built our house from our own timber.

Here's a tip for carpenters. We used mangrove trunks for our foundation piles. Mangrove is the hardest wood I've ever come across...it's almost like nutshell (any nut I can think of...coconut, wallnut, macadamia...very hard, but with a grain). If you char the outside of the log in a fire, no insects will attack it when you bury it and it will likely still be there for centuries.

The only problem with it is that even just for nailing, you had to pre-drill a hole. 6 inch nails would just bend if you didn't.

Interesting post. I've never worked with mangrove wood but I found olive tree wood to be extremely hard as well. My father's got a pair of pots he made when he was an apprentice from some African hardwood. He said that wood working tools wouldn't look at it, he had used those made for turning steel.

I can't believe you used to pit saw in this day and age, but I suppose it's still used in some places. Did you take turns in being on top? (That will get eek interested, she'll think we're talking about sex). I'd imagine the bottom man would get to eat a lot of sawdust.

There's a guy in our village with an electric chain saw with a four foot boom. He goes around cutting boards for anyone who cuts a tree down. When I came here I considered starting a small sawmill, I love timber and worked in mills for years. It's too hard here though, virtually all logging is illegal now.

Interesting post. I've never worked with mangrove wood but I found olive tree wood to be extremely hard as well. My father's got a pair of pots he made when he was an apprentice from some African hardwood. He said that wood working tools wouldn't look at it, he had used those made for turning steel.

I can't believe you used to pit saw in this day and age, but I suppose it's still used in some places. Did you take turns in being on top? (That will get eek interested, she'll think we're talking about sex). I'd imagine the bottom man would get to eat a lot of sawdust.

There's a guy in our village with an electric chain saw with a four foot boom. He goes around cutting boards for anyone who cuts a tree down. When I came here I considered starting a small sawmill, I love timber and worked in mills for years. It's too hard here though, virtually all logging is illegal now.

I'm so glad that you appreciate what I'm talking about.

Of the 3 man team, each one took a turn at each position; top, bottom, and sharpening. A "turn" was one flitch or first sawcut when the log still had a big diameter, or 2 or 3 planks once the log was smaller. The guy at the bottom had it worst. He would eat and snort alot of sawdust, but he had the hardest physical job, too. His job was to pull down on the cutting stroke, and to assist the saw back up on the return stroke. The guy at the top had to direct the saw and guide it through each stroke.

Sharpening was a break .

I can get quite passionate about wood.

(Someone's going to take THAT the wrong way, aren't they???)

I can get quite passionate about wood.

(Someone's going to take THAT the wrong way, aren't they???)

Never Harcourt, never!

We're all grown-up round these here parts.....

*parts...* guffaws...

Diving at night, I always used a speargun. Diving during the day, I used what was locally called a "Gilbert"; like a Hawaian sling except the spear is not attached to the rubber so there is a much greater range. The kilipati (gilbert) was made by either 8 guage fencing wire or quarter inch reinforcing rod. Get a couple of metres, tie one end around a fence post or tree, tie the other end to a sturdy stick. By pulling with all your weight whilst simmultaneously winding, the wire becomes perfectly straight and springy. Cut to length (about 130 cm), sharpen one end to a point, the other end is flattened with a hammer, filed smooth and a notch cut into it, much like your average archery arrow. Speargun rubber is sold by the metre in Fiji. 30 - 40 cms of rubber with a cloth loop for your hand whipped to one end and a small wire loop whipped to the other end. The action of using the kilipati is much like the action of using a slingshot.

The kilipati is deadly and accurate. The only problem with it is that you have to be very quick to retrieve your spear as it is relatively light and bigger fish can swim off with it or shake it off. It has no chord attached like with a speargun. Also, you do not want to fire it in the direction of deep water, never to be seen again.

One day I was diving off the edge of the reef. A pair of giant trevally cruised past very casually. I could not resist......I took aim and fired, immediately regreting it because that size of fish is just too big for a small spear. What a lucky shot! it hit the GT perfectly just behind the head and severed the backbone. With a long shudder, the GT tipped sideways and sank to the bottom where I was very quick to get a hold of it. I did not weigh it but it was about 1 metre long.

The normal catch would have been parrot fish. Great day!

This type of spear was popular in Australia when spearfishing was legal. It was usually made from light aluminum tubing with strong rubber lines attached.

I was never a diver, the mask made me claustrophobic.

I'd be curious as to the eating quality of the fish you caught. I found even smaller trevally flesh to be a bit dry. The general rule was that the reef fish were usually better eating than the pelagics in the tropics.

I've also believed cold water fish to be better eating than the tropical species. The much vaunted Barramundi for example is nowhere as tasty as a King George Whiting or a small Snapper.

Although I have done a fair bit of diving I've rarely speared fish, but I remember one occassion I did get a fairly large Dusky Morwong and had great difficulty getting it up.

It was swimming in circles with me desperatly hanging on to the spear gun, which was of course attached to the spear in the fish. I didn't want to drop, and lose, the gun, but I was also very keen to get up about 15 feet to get a breath of air.

I wasn't far from desperation stakes time when fortunately the fish gave up. It turned out to be fairly dismal eating so the whole thing was not really worth the trouble.

We always used to release any Barracuda we caught as we were not that happy with their eating qualities also.

A great eating pelagic we often caught were the Spanish or Narrow Barred Mackeral.

This was the biggest I ever caught, but I only got a picture of it's head after it had been cut into steaks:

It was nearly the same height as me and estimated weight about 65-70lbs. A lot of fun on a 60lb handline.

The cross-section steaks were too big to fit on a dinner plate.

Wow, that is a seriously big fish Old Crock.

I doubt I'd have the strength to pull something like that in these days.

I'm thinking about getting back into fishing up here, but using light spinning gear and lures. A 2 or 3 pound fish on 6 pound line can be very good fun.

Take a look at my thread in the fishing sub-forum and see what some imbecile said to me. I don't normally mind trolls but illiterate trolls do get my goat I'll admit.

Take a look at my thread in the fishing sub-forum and see what some imbecile said to me. I don't normally mind trolls but illiterate trolls do get my goat I'll admit.

What a dick!

It's people like him who stop me posting much in the General forums.

In here we can reminisce and brag, knowing that others who arn't interested will just not bother to read it and wont throw their shit into the ring.

That's a fine fish Old Croc.

As for pelagics....I agree wholeheartedly that spanish mackeral are excellent. Spanish Mackeral are the walu I wrote about earlier. Excellent cooked any way, but also superb done raw.

The barracuda caught at night or at day with futifuti are wonderful eating...one of my faves. There are 3 types in Fiji, or at least the locals recognise 3 species: the small ones I've alluded to, a mid size, and a giant (which I've caught trolling). Trevally are a nice eating fish, but as with all seafood, care must be taken not to overcook. Even snapper tend to be dry and tasteless when they get bigger, especially if not taken care cooking.

A thing to look forward to on night fishing trips was the fried barracuda for breakfast. Juicy juicy luscious tasty yum.

Very strange thing with the GT. Whenever I got one and the MiL was around, she would cook the gills and eat them. She never wanted the gills of other large fish. May have been an iron in the diet thing. Never tried it myself.

Other odd fish bits that are eaten over there, usually species dependant: mullet stomachs. These are probably akin to chicken crops....tough, crunchy muscley things, not the "gut" intestine. I don't mind them curried, but my wife used to like them raw, straight out of the fish. Tuna and GT stomachs also. Eyeballs of any fish are a treat.

That reminds me....the eyeballs are jelly filled and quite yummy, but there is a hard white centre ball. On smaller fish it is too small, but with bigger eyes, the white "marble" is covered with a soft chalky substance that can be scraped off and you are left with a hard white "marble". The Fijians, the men, (some of them) would keep these if they were the right size, (anything up to the size of a green pea) and use them like this: they would cut a slit, parralel to the shaft, in the very thin skin on the top of their penis about halfway down the shaft and insert the eyeball marble under the skin and let it heal over. The purported reason is that the women will never leave you if you have a knobbly penis. I have never heard a woman tell her side of the story, though. I kid you not.

Harcourt, you make your life seem idyllic, the sort of "away from all the hassle" existance many, if not all, dream of. But there must have been down times when you didn't catch any food fish, or couldn't go fishing because of the weather or a typhoon came through wrecking people's homes and livelyhoods.

I know reminiscing is all about remembering the good times but it's often the bad ones that make the good that much better.

You're quite right Phil. It was idyllic, and there were some very tough times. When I first started there by myself I had just turned 18, finished high school in NZ, and was full of teenage boy confidence. I was my own boss with nobody to tell me what to do.

It took a while to realise that I had the hardest boss of all: Mother Nature. She did not give time off for a rest unless it suited Her. She did not pay overtime rates if I had to get up in the middle of the night to pull the boat in due to a storm. She did not worry if wild pigs wiped out the vege patch and paid no compensation for drought.

When I got married, my mum returned to Fiji for a couple of weeks. She made the wedding cake (which was her Australian Boiled Fruitcake Xmas Cake recipe). It was a 2 tier thing, quite clever. After the wedding, she doused the top tier with rum (no brandy around), wrapped it in tin foil and sealed it in a plastic container telling me to keep it for our first baby....for some ceremony like christening, I forget.

Well, we had a run of terrible weather. I couldn't get out fishing, and couldn't get to Taveuni for shopping. Weeks of it. We cleaned out the cupboards of everything and just ate eggs and coconut. Finally I couldn't resist any more, so I opend up the cake. We rationed it out for 3 days. Gosh we felt guilty. Years later I told my mum, and she didn't blame me at all. .

The was a drought. The tank water was getting very low, so I decided to dig a well. Not wanting to make work for my self, I figured that the closest place to the water table would be the lowest point in the paddock. Made sense then. I spent 2 weeks digging and hauling rocks. The last 3 or 4 days of digging entailed the wife helping because I needed someone to pull each bucket of soil up. Each morning was spent bailing out mud. Once I had a nice metre of water, I lugged rocks to the well and lined it.

It was a beatiful well. About a meter of crystal clear water in the bottom. We used it for washing and laundry, keeping the tank for drinking, although I'm sure it was quite drinkable.

1 week after finishing the well, the rains came. Effort wasted? No, it was a good well and would serve us next drought. WRONG!

Being at the lowest part of the paddock, and having no built up sides, when the rains came, the well flooded and after a week or two, the well filled up with mud, silt and debris. This mud and debris compacted over the next year and when we had another dry spell, I had to dig it all out again. Easier than the first time, but nonetheless a chore.

I can remember my tears when 3 of my piglets strangled themselves on a fishing net I had hung out to dry.

I can remember my rectum-quivering fear as I lay between 2 matresses as the front of the old house was pounded by waves during the worst hurricane I have ever experienced. The eye passed over at the same time as high tide, and the sea came right up. I know the eye passed over because trees that had been knocked over during the night had fallen in differtent directions. The boat ended up behind the house. Everything inside the house was drenched with sea water and sand because the water had come in through the gap between top of wall and roof. As I write, I'm getting a bit misty-eyed at the memory of my worst ever night of fear.

There were times of very poor diet. There were times of paddling for miles without a bite. There were times of illness with no doctors or chemist.

One time, before I married, I fell ill. Fever. I was too sick to do anything. We had a pit toilet outhouse and I was too ill to reach it; I used to lie at the back door to toilet, then crawl back to bed. I spent a few days like that. One day I heard a boat, so I forced myself to go down to the beach. It was the neighbours passing by. I tried to wave frantically, but it looked just like a simple wave. They waved back and carried on homeward. I collapsed on the beach.

I woke up in bed at the neighbours. What had happened was the boys from next door thought it odd how I'd waved and then sat/lay down on the beach. They were sitting around at home drinking kava when one of them decided that it was too odd, and he got back in his boat and came back to my place to check where he found me still unconscious on the beach.

Twice I've sewed stiches in my own leg. The first time, my mother tried to do it. She had the proper sutures, but only a pair of pliers for holding the needle. It is suprising how tough the skin on your leg is and since there was no anaesthetic, she just couldn't push the needle up hard enough as she was too worried about the pain. It was indeed easier for me to grit and do it as I would just get it over with.

I'm starting to get into the stories that are often met with scepticism and I have learnt that some stories should simply not be told to strangers if I don't want to be branded a "story teller".

I'll think about it.

But, yes, Phil, there were some tough times......but overall it was all worth it. I spoke to my brother last night. He lives in Sydney. I told him about this thread and we reminisced a bit. We did have an amazing life there that was far removed from modern city life.

I will relate some of HIS fishing tales....

And a lot of people thhink they are having a bad day when the 07:15 to London Waterloo is running 20 minutes late and it's raining.

Although the bad times must have been just that there's a lot of truth in the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

You've no idea how much I used to suffer up here before I found a decent baker.