Wetting the Net
During our usual Sunday morning chat in Hooks’ kitchen, he told me about the farm his sister and brother-in-law had just purchased. I knew both his brother-in-law and sister who already owned a large sheep station; I also knew that he was a bit of an entrepreneur… during hard times he tried farming geese and still had a shipping container full of frozen geese for sale. The only thing was that there was no buyer. He also experimented with using cow dung in a biogas digester, and nearly lost his life when he copped a lungful of the gas, but it did work out well despite his stay in hospital. Having said that, he was a pretty sharp bloke.
The new property was a coastal farm, a deceased estate, for which the plan was to finish store lambs (fatten them) from his other farm, and to align with his altruistic nature, on the steeper areas he wanted return native vegetation… something he hoped I would help him with. Of more interest to Hooks though, was the inlet that was the farm’s southern boundary and of course, the fish therein. Which is why, that morning, we made plans to head down there the next Sunday morning and wet the flounder net.
Hooks was always a smidgen late, he never wanted to appear too eager, but he was well and truly ready when I arrived. His dinghy was loaded on his trailer; the flounder net was well secured inside it and the Landrover was idling in wait. On the way south, he explained the previous owner of the farm had died and his only relative, a son, lived somewhere overseas and just wanted the farm sold. He’d come back for a week to bury the old fellow and took anything that was valuable or of use to him and sold the farm as is… Hooks had no doubt that the land agent would have had a fossick too, and said his sister was going to turn the house into farm accommodation, so whenever they had work to do there, they wouldn’t need to bring the odds and ends associated with their stay.
The farm was tidy, all short, windswept grassland that stretched to the sea, the thirties-style bungalow appeared to be neat, and was sheltered from the southwest by a dense macrocarpa hedge that had been trimmed within the past six months. Hooks had a key, which let us into the sizable kitchen, which appeared as if someone still lived there… we decided we wouldn’t look into the other rooms, for no other reason than the privacy of some old, dead bloke. There was no sign of that ‘closed smell’, the fridge had been emptied but not the pantry and there was electricity and water, so we had a cup of tea. I don’t take sugar but Hooks did, and luckily there was a partly full sugar bowl in the pantry. Though exposed to the easterly, salt-laden winds, the house was cosy without the need for heating.
The farm boundary was a river estuary, with a separate arm of about four acres that may have been part of the farm property. We assumed that because there were old fence posts, half submerged, but with no wire. By including the four-acre lagoon, in the survey, the surveyor would have saved himself a handful of pegs… but we couldn’t know for sure without the survey map.
We didn’t have to carry the dinghy more than a few metres and once ready, Hooks rowed out, towing the net as he went. I fed the net out so it didn’t become twisted… lead weights down and cork floats up. The old net had been forty metres long, but we had to cut some out of it because a dolphin had gone through it a year or two previous. I held the rope while Hooks rowed in a semicircle and returned to the shore about thirty metres seaward of me. We pulled the net in slowly to find fifteen flounders and a number of flapping mullet, which we quickly returned to the water along the smaller founders… we kept eight big ones. From the numbers caught in one drag, we reckoned, nobody had fished there for a number of years.
We’d noticed there was a fog rolling in, and by the time we’d loaded the dinghy and net, it was cold and damp and there was poor visibility. The ever-hungry Hooks decided that we needed warming and sustenance in out bellies, so we went into the house and found an electric frying pan. In the pantry there was some dripping in an old baked bean tin that smelled ok. I was the cook and chose the biggest flounder for Hooks… it only just fitted in the frying pan! Meanwhile, Hooks made a brew, an old forestry brew… cocoa, milk powder, some orange essence and sugar; we called it ‘jaffa drink’, after a popular confectionary. With boiling water added the drink warmed cockles of our hearts, and relaxed us!
Hooks tucked into his flounder with some relish, remarking that there was nothing better than fresh-caught flounder. But by the time I’d cooked mine, he had slowed down somewhat. I had to agree with him that there was nothing better than fresh-caught flounder, and I particularly enjoyed the roe that his larger fish seemed to lack. But I could only eat the top side of the fish, so looked of some lunch wrap so I could take the bottom half home. There was no lunch wrap, but I found a suitable plastic container to strip the meat off the bone and pack away. We’d achieved our goal of warming and filling up and assessing the likely fishing potential of the lagoon.
The fog remained, which prevented us seeing more of the lay of the land so we cleaned up and headed home, making a pact to return as often as we could, which was never more than once every couple of months. Those were the days!
