Guest Post: In defence of game fishing
A guest post by David Garrett:
While on holiday in Northland recently, I was present when a friend landed a 273 kg blue marlin. For those who know game fishing, that is a significant fish – if not a record breaker since he was using 37 kg line. I got to thinking about how game fishing – along with duck shooting and other “blood sports” – is increasingly the target of wowsers who decry such traditional blokey past times. So I thought I would pen a defence of the venerable sport of big game fishing, and on the way try to educate the ignorant on some salient points thereof.
Firstly, is it cruel to the fish? For at least two reasons, I strongly suspect they do not feel pain. Firstly, consider their reaction to being hooked – it is to go like hell, and valiantly resist to the last the tension put on the hook by a big game rod and reel with the drag wound up. That is the total opposite of the behavior of a 500 kg bull being led by a ring through his nose – the bull obediently trots along behind whoever is leading him, avoiding even slight pressure on his nose ring.
Secondly, it is quite common for anglers who have tagged and released a fish – now the most common end to a fish vs. man fight – to hook the same fish again minutes after it has been freed. If the fish suffered pain from taking a lure – a brightly coloured plastic thing which doesn’t really look like a fish – is it likely it would immediately take that same lure again? I don’t know…perhaps some qualified marine biologist could enlighten us. Those without such knowledge should hold their peace.
Is the contest one sided? Again, in my view, not at all. Any honest game fisherman will tell you that the number of “hookups” – when a fish takes a lure – is about five times as many as fish which are actually brought to the side of the boat. For a start, the line is usually a fraction of the strength of the fish. The blue marlin I refer to was landed – after a fight of an hour and a half – on line with a breaking strain not much more than one tenth of the weight of the fish. One toss of its head could easily break the line.
Most such battles end with the fish winning – either by spitting the hook or breaking the line. Only if the angler is skilled and the skipper is even better does the contest move to the stage of “fish by boat”. And here’s where knowledge really triumphs over ignorance.
Most game fish these days are tagged and released. The ignorant say “so what, the fish dies anyway”. Not so. There are many stories of fish tagged and released in New Zealand waters being caught again in the Islands, or even as far away as Hawaii. It is not uncommon for a fish to be tagged here, tagged again in Tonga, and tagged a third time back here. Obviously some of the tagged and released fish die. Equally obviously, many don’t, and live to fight another day.
One of the biggest lacuna of knowledge about big game fishing is the rarity and age of a fish like the one I saw landed last week. Such fish are not like large snapper, which may be 40 or even 50 years old. A blue marlin reaches maturity in 5-8 years, and may live to be 25. Let us say 100 mature specimens are taken in New Zealand waters every year; that is a small fraction of much older large snapper which are taken, which any angler worth his salt returns to the water. If for no other reason, (they are breeding stock) they are not great eating anyway.
Do game fish get eaten? You betcha. I have always been opposed to taking fish of whatever size and then dumping them. There are sad pictures of Zane Grey’s camps in the Bay of Islands in the 1920’s with ten or more magnificent fish lined up and simply left to rot in the sun. That is bullshit, and to the best of my knowledge rarely happens today.
The fish I am referring to was taken rather than tagged and released because it was the biggest the angler had ever caught, and because he will have a cast of the head made and mounted. The 200 odd kilograms left after the head and guts have been removed will be smoked, and then distributed among his friends. Smoked marlin is really delicious, as anyone who has tried it can attest.
The game fishing industry is a big tourist earner. Our trip cost $200 per person, or $1000 to the skipper for the day. Thanks to the efforts of Zane Grey and other later aficionados, New Zealand is a mecca for those who enjoy the almost sexual thrill of a game rod “going off” when a big fish takes a lure. It is my honest view that the critics of big game fishing as a sport and past time are largely either ignorant of the things I have covered in this piece, or simply “opposed” regardless.
Notwithstanding all of the above, I do not believe game fishing will survive the next 50 years. The wowsers will eventually convince the ignorant to ban it, along with similar past times. So to those who have never experienced the thrill of a loaded (in the fish’s favour) fight against a giant of the deep, I say go for it, before the ignorant and the overly sensitive tell you that you are not allowed to.