The Incredible Great White Fishing Story by Daniel Scott

“Holy mackerel!”

Aldo has nearly dropped his Steinlager. Doug’s jaw has fallen four storeys.

All I see is a flash, off to my left, about five metres from the boat.

“Let him go. Let him run with it”

Let what go? Let who run with what?

The shark, that’s what.

There’s a second flash. The grey-brown shark is way out of the water spinning through the air, grinning like a tiger.

“For the love of anchovies, will you look at that?” Aldo grips his Steinlager tight.

The message is stopping at my over-abused synapses. I can’t connect that monster with the rod I’m holding. I felt the pull. I thought it was big. But a three metre bronze whaler on the end of my line? At this early stage in my fishing career? You’re kidding.

With an explosive splosh the huge beast lands back in the sea. On the boat hands tear at camera cases.

“Give it some slack,” chorus the aficionados.

I let the line go. Nowhere near fast enough. The painful tug in my forearms dissolves immediately.

The shark smashes the surface of the sea once again. It looks incensed. So would you be If you’d just found five men and a boat on the end of your tasty snapper dinner. In mid air, a full metre clear of the water, it’s twisting once more, jerking its lower jaw furiously from side to side.

It’s at times like this that you really wish you were a demi-god like Maui. He who, according to Maori legend, hauled New Zealand’s North Island out of the ocean using only his grandmother’s jawbone and his own blood as bait.

Two days earlier. The Giant Malaysian Prawn Park, near Lake Taupo, North Island.

Our quest for that special fish begins at the lower end of the food chain.

Nearby, the Huka Falls are gushing forth, the sulphurous earth steams eerily and sludgy geysers are grumbling and occasionally completely losing their cool.

Neil the Prawn Man is unaffected by such mundanity. Prawns are his passion: “This is the world’s only geothermically heated prawn farm...”

Aldo’s mate Micky is impressed: “You don’t bloody say, eh?”

“...Over 5 million Giant Malaysian Prawns are produced here each year. They’re fed on mussels and scrambled egg...”

“Don’t they like alphabetti spaghetti?” asks Doug.

“...In this breeding tank here, there’s a ratio of seven females to every male.”

“Great gangling sardines!” splutters Aldo, nearly dropping his Steinlager.

At lunch, we reduce the population of libidinous crustaceans by a few dozen and leave, in search of a greater challenge.

For a long time Maui had been too lazy to go out fishing, lying in his house while his brothers toiled at sea. Finally, he was shamed into going with them. But if he was going to go , he was going to do it his way. He went to the cave which contained his grandmother’s bones and chose her jawbone for a hook. Even then his brothers did not want him on their boat and refused to give him bait. So he punched himself on the nose and used his own blood as bait.



* A Brief History of Fishing

Aged nine, on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, a friend and I spent a week building a lobster pot.. Our task complete, we carried it at low tide as far out to sea as our small arms and legs could manage, attached a buoy to it and left it on the sand to collect our booty. The next day it was gone, the flimsy pot swept away by the swelling English Channel.

At uni, I tried my hand at fishing for trout and caught nothing all day except a barrel of derision when I slipped and fell into a river. Then on a Deep Sea fishing trip off Kenya, as other novices bagged marlins the size of Papa Hemingway, I copped severe sunburn. It was the first time, the boat’s owner assured me, that anybody had failed to catch anything in an entire day in those laden waters.

* Night, Lake Taupo, heart of the North Island, New Zealand

Lake Taupo is cloaked in quiet. There is little hint now of the enormous volcanic explosion which formed it in 186AD, the effects of which turned the sky blood red as far away as Rome.

Darkness dribbles down. The charter boat jiggles in the water.

Doug is already impatient: he can’t believe our twenty minutes of flyfishing has yielded nothing. There are over one million catchable trout in Lake Taupo.

“I still say we should try ‘em on the mussels an’ that,” he asserts.

Beth, a local belle with peachy cheeks, is casting a line. Arm and rod move in unison, the line looping through the air and splashing into the water 20 metres away. She replaces the rod in its holder.

Old hands relax and chat. I eye-ball the water intently, peering through the gloom. The clock ticks. The boys get into bravado. I continue to stare. I see movement where there is none. Beth takes her merciless teasing well.

Then, a tug. The line goes with it. The rod flexes. I dive on it. The prize, if there is to be one, will be mine.

“Great galloping seahorses, he’s got one!” Aldo nearly loses his Steinlager.

Beth and her mild-mannered boss hurry to my side.

“Stay calm, that’s it, don’t hurry her,” they coax. “Slowly does it. That’s it. Bring her in.”

In my mind’s eye, slow motion vies with fast-forward for ascendancy. The only reality is in my hands and arms.

It’s over before I know it, Beth ladling up the fish with a net at the side of the boat: “She’s a beautiful size”.

The seasoned anglers clap me round the shoulders. “Well done son! Good on ya mate!” Aldo cradles his Steinlager.

My first fish is a 2.5 kilogram rainbow trout. Beth goes to work with a fillet knife and throws it on the barbie. It’s enough for eight people.

The fish took Maui’s hook immediately, lifting the boat clear out of the water and spinning it round. His brothers were terrified but Maui held onto the gargantuan fish, reciting a potent chant, until at last he pulled the fish up. On the surface it stretched for miles, the boat resting high and dry on its back.

Just before dusk. Off Crusoe Rock, Hauraikai Bay, near Auckland

A cloudless day ebbs away. All day New Zealand’s “city of sails” has been trying to outSydney Sydney: innumerable white hulls clipping through the chop, glasses of premium sauvignon blanc clinking self-congratulation in the sun.

Fifteen corpulent snapper flap in a plastic container on deck. The latest is mine - my fourth twilight catch, the second biggest of the day.

Aldo’s boom smacks the silence: “Thundering trumpetfish, he’s got another one! “ He’s nearly dropped his Steinlager.

I grin. On my first visit to New Zealand, after a history of abject failure as a fisherman, I’ve not so much broken my duck as smashed it to smithereens.

“It’s getting dark, best be getting back,” says our captain.

“Give me one last go,” I plead.

You can still see the shape of the fish which Maui caught in the North Island’s landscape. Its head is in the south, Wellington Harbour being the mouth, Lake Wairarapa one eye and Cape Kidnappers the fish hook. Northland forms the tail and the East coast and Taranaki its fins. The heart of the fish is Lake Taupo.

Dusk. Off Crusoe Rock, Hauraikai Bay, near Auckland.

I am not Maui. I’ve lost the shark.

My line is limp, my rod dejected.

But awe is puffing up my chest and bubbles of excitement still fill my stomach.

“Bloody hell, have ya ever seen anything like that, eh?” self-questions Micky.

Aldo has dropped his Steinlager.