Extreme Fishing

by Robson Green

  I’m back in the hot seat and inch by inch I’m gaining some ground. It’s been fifty minutes; landing this fish is like hauling John Prescott out of the water. Que pulls up the line as I reel in. But even working together the two of us still can’t bring it in. Que’s friend takes over – it’s become a three-man fight in the searing heat. After an hour and a half the ray nearly takes the boat over and I am screaming in agony – the load is too much. Que helps me. It’s piercing agony. The way a stingray moves in the water it’s like pulling up a huge plate with water on top: it’s the ultimate amount of drag. Suddenly we see the fishing weight appear out of the coffee, and then a wing, flapping like an elephant’s ear, breaks the surface. We see her and she truly is like something out of a sci-fi movie. Her wingspan is ten or eleven feet, and her length from head to tail is thirteen or fourteen feet. We guess she’s around a quarter of a ton but these rays can grow to over a thousand pounds!

  On the edge of her tail is a spike. If it comes near us we are in trouble. The spike can measure up to fifteen inches, is shaped like a bayonet and covered in a sheath of toxic mucus that is capable of piercing bone. A stingray has just killed Steve Irwin, and now Que is telling me to get in the water and hold the fish.

  ‘Are you insane?’ I yelp.

  All the stingray has to do is quickly flick her tail to the side or over her back like a scorpion, the spike deploys and it’s game over. They can kill sharks; they can kill anything. It’s like a trigger and it’s lightning-quick. I stay back while Que and his friend cover the tail with a blanket, wrapping it round and tying it down tightly. The fish is no longer a threat.

  There’s no way we can get this creature on the boat so I really do have to go in, according to Jamie, whom I now loathe once more. He was lovely after my father’s passing but now he’s reverted to his old sadistic ways. I get in the water and wade slowly towards this alien life-form. I am petrified. I hold her with Que and his friend, quickly spout a few facts about this giant to camera, and it’s time to let the awesome creature off the hook. We take the metal out of her mouth and she glides gently away back to her home on the bottom of the Bang Pakong.

  I wish I could tell my Dad about the experience. I phone Uncle Matheson instead.

  Chapter Eight

  KENYA

  Addiction

  September 2009, World Tour, Series 3

  As I look out over Kilimanjaro for the first time, I think this programme is actually going to work. It might even be a success. As a team we have started to know what we are doing and it turns out Extreme Fishing isn’t really a fishing programme at all; it’s a travelogue that explores different cultures and places, with the common link of fishing. Fishing is quite literally my passport to the world. (Sir Winston Churchill once said, ‘Polo is a passport to the world.’ Mine is fishing and I don’t need six horses to do it.) I have turned down several acting jobs to do this series but the locations of Manchester, Rochdale and Cowgate in Newcastle didn’t really come close to the savannahs and exotic wildlife of Africa, not to mention the record-breaking angling to be had off the east coast. This is the place to catch the big five: blue marlin, black marlin, swordfish, sailfish and striped marlin. It’s the stuff of dreams and it blows Waterloo Road firmly out of the water!

  As we come into land at Nairobi Airport, it also dawns on me that I am addicted to the show. It’s like a fix and when I don’t get my hit I feel sad or that something is missing, and that’s just the days in between episodes. Time passes slowly when I’m back in the UK – tick, tick, tick – like the hand of a faulty clock stuck on the same minute, unable to budge. But when I’m filming the show I feel so upbeat and occupied in a positive way. If I’m honest I’m a lot healthier because of this gig – fishing has replaced drinking, which is par for the course in this business. I knew I had a drink problem when I found an olive in my urine sample – thank you, Keith Richards.

  From Nairobi we take another plane to Watamu National Maritime Park in the Indian Ocean. The light aircraft is falling apart and I spot a gaping hole in the wing mid-flight! It reminds me of the good old days of Dan-Air (aka Dan Dare). We survive the rickety African flight and carry on to our hotel. We are staying at Hemingway’s, named after the author, traveller and hunter who spent many years in Kenya. I didn’t realise that he’d shot and fished for anything that moved. In 1933, inspired by the legendary hunts of President Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest borrowed money from his wife’s uncle and set off on a three-month safari.

  I look at the gigantic stuffed fish adorning the walls of the hotel: there’s a giant black marlin and a beautiful golden dorado. I’m determined to catch both on this trip. The dorado won’t outsmart me this time, as it did in the Philippines. I still carry the sinking feeling of that loss. Totally my fault, but it won’t happen again. I’ve come here to set the record straight.

  But first things first: I need a haircut, because right now I look like Richard Clayderman. I ask at reception if they have a salon and they tell me they have an expert stylist who comes in. I make an appointment and continue filming. A few hours later, enter Fatima.

  ‘Come this way,’ she says, leading me to a room with bright lights and a mirror. I sit down in front of it. Fatima crosses the room with a pair of electric shears, dragging the lead noisily across the hardwood floor. She plugs the shears in and sets them at grade 3.

  ‘Hang on! Do you have any scissors?’ I venture.

  ‘No, I have a comb and shears – it will be fine.’

  ‘But I just want you to tidy it up,’ I say, putting my hand up to prevent the shears taking me a step closer to Yul Brynner. ‘Just a trim would be great,’ I say firmly.

  ‘I am very sad,’ she says, sighing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just buried my sister. I miss her so much. We put her in the earth at the top of a mountain.’

  Inside I am thinking, OK, that is very sad – but I still don’t want an emotionally vulnerable woman to come anywhere near my head with a pair of electric shears.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, you must be traumatised,’ I say, looking at her in the mirror.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  The tears are streaming down her face as she brings the shears down on my head. She gets to work like a champion sheepshearer and it’s over in a matter of seconds.

  I walk outside and find the crew. They take one look at me and their faces fall. I have gone from Clayderman to Charles Bronson within fifteen minutes and now everything we have shot before the ‘attack’ is unusable because of continuity.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ asks Alistair.

  ‘Let’s just say she wasn’t in the mood for a trim. I think I got off lightly.’

  Alistair shakes his head sadly: ‘How can you manage to fuck up a haircut, Robson?’

  Thankfully I’d brought my trusty Nanogen in my Mary Poppins make-up bag. It’s a scalp filler that makes you look like you have twice as much hair. Think David Guest but more subtle. And yes, I carry a make-up bag. Actors and presenters have all manner of tricks to avoid looking shiny, sallow or dog-rough on camera.

  If you are an Alpha male, feel free to skip this paragraph but for the gays and ladies here’re my top beauty tips: I apply a Clinique green cream, which covers up any redness or sunburn, and it’s great if you suffer from rosacea or are a raging alcoholic. Then I apply a primer, which evens the skin tone. Next I lighten under the eyelids and use concealer as necessary. I then apply powder. I add a little eyeliner on the lower lashes because when you are filming in hot, bright countries there is high contrast, so features need to be accentuated. I also use MAC mascara for the top lashes, and on my lips I use Zam-Buk, a green ointment that protects and highlights them. I only wear make-up when I am filming, not every day – honest. And just so you know, even butch men like Matt Dawson, Bruce Parry and Ray Mears all wear make-up on TV.

  Anyway, we crack on with filming. It’s a hot day but we are all relishing being outside after the shocking weather back home i
n the UK. However, none of us has applied enough sunscreen so our faces, heads, necks, arms and ears are all scorched by the midday sun. A few hours later we look like Viz magazine’s ‘Brits Abroad’. Peter is singed the worst and that evening I suggest he try my Green Cream to cover his badly burned face.

  ‘I am not putting any of your poofy muck on my face!’

  ‘It’s not poofy muck, it’s Clinique!’

  He suffers like a man; I suffer like an actor.

  El Dorado

  The next morning I tear the curtains open. I am red-hot with sunburn but the prospect of catching a golden dorado this morning is like lidocaine.

  We walk down to the harbour to meet Callum, a strapping Kenyan fisherman and my guide for today. We board his gleaming white sports fishing boat and set off a mile out to sea, to a place known locally as Sailfish Alley. The sun is hot and it’s a beautiful day to go fishing. On the way we come across a sperm whale carcass floating on the surface, about forty feet in length. As we get closer the aroma is abhorrent. It is an oily, sweet, rotten stench of death. Callum thinks the whale has either died of natural causes or been hit by a boat, which sadly happens all too often. Every year thousands of whales lose their lives to container ships, like flies on a car windscreen. It’s a tragedy that will hopefully one day be preventable through technology. We slowly pass the carcass. It moves strangely in the water, its tail swishing from side to side. At first I think it’s gas escaping but then I see a dorsal fin, in fact several of them – 800-pound tiger sharks are taking bites out of the whale like Brie. They are incredible-looking fish, with stripes like the eponymous big cat and just as vicious. I shudder. There are only two types of people who are not scared of sharks: psychopaths and dead people.

  After just twenty minutes’ motoring across the waves we reach our destination, Sailfish Alley. It’s a huge drop-off and natural feeding channel for pelagic, billfish and other species that have a penchant for bait fish. We rig our skip bait, large bonitos, relations of the mackerel family, and trawl the live bait behind the boat. It’s not something I’m used to fly-fishing in Northumberland, but it’s the way they do it here in Kenya. Almost immediately I get a take. I set the rod and pull the line in tight. It’s not a dorado, as the fish doesn’t become airborne within twenty seconds, but whatever it is nimbly jumps off the hook. I reel in the bait; half of it is missing. Something has cut through the fish like a serrated knife through butter.

  Ten minutes later this happens again: our bait is taken and the predator misses the hook by millimetres. Callum thinks it’s a wahoo nicking our bait but on the sixth attempt I catch the culprit. I am convinced it’s the same one that’s been eating all the pies and now, overfed, has got sloppy and made a fatal mistake. I bring the twenty-pound fish onto the boat. It is a wahoo – the Usain Bolt of the ocean (cue lightning pose). We knock it on the head and keep it for our supper. Wahoo tastes absolutely delicious, as its Hawaiian name suggests. It’s a bit like mackerel but with a softer, more delicate flavour.

  I don’t have to wait long for my next strike and it’s gold, as the shining dorado bursts out of the water. I know how tough this pulchritudinous fish is to catch and I’m not going to lose her – she is my greatest prize. She leaps athletically out of the ocean again. If I don’t keep her under control she’ll turn off the hook and be free. She is so powerful she can exceed 50 m.p.h. in short bursts, and she’s smart – I’ve underestimated the golden maverick once before but this time I play it safe and use all the skills I have learnt to land her.

  I’ve done it! I am ecstatic. A quick bump on the head and we’ve got a fifteen-pound mahi-mahi (the Hawaiian name for dorado, meaning very strong) for our supper to complement our wahoo – I am a very happy man. As we head back to shore I take in the stunning coastline. Callum points to the starboard side of the boat and as I cross the deck I see a female humpback whale and her calf. We are all rendered speechless. She ejects sea-water out of her spout like a geyser while her calf expels a faint mist more like a lawn sprinkler – he’ll get there in the end. They swim by the boat for a while, dive down and are gone.

  Back at Hemingway’s, I eat the wahoo and dorado with the crew and Callum. I look around at the other clientele in the bistro. There are a conspicuous number of rotund German women in their sixties having candlelit dinners with young African men. Around the world, I’ve seen my fair share of saggy ageing men with fresh-faced nubile girls, which is repugnant, but I didn’t know there was sex tourism the other way round. These boys have been groomed by these grey-haired pornogrannies, seduced with cars, money and treats. They say many a good tune is played on an old fiddle, but looking at some of these women, I would definitely take up a new instrument.

  Dhow Fishing

  I wake up with images of haggard German women on heat and feel sick. At breakfast there are old Italian boilers in on the act and we all decide to get some air. Today we are heading to Malindi, a former port and tourist resort on the east coast. I am dhow fishing with Hassan, Mohammed and Mohammed (Mo for short), three guys who fish together day in, day out and who are like the Kenyan angling equivalent of the Rolling Stones, all with faces that could tell a thousand stories. They are all wearing the traditional dhow dress of plain coloured kilts. We greet one another and I hop aboard their boat.

  Dhow boats are Indian in origin and design and have been used in the area for centuries; today we are going out in a vessel Hassan says he has designed and built himself. The craftsmanship is truly outstanding. Coming from a shipbuilding background I appreciate the design and execution. As a lad out of school I was accepted for an apprenticeship as a draughtsman at Swan Hunter, where I worked in hull design and shell expansion, but I quickly realised that, if shipbuilding and I were both to survive, we would have to go our separate ways. I know the industry has been struggling since the 1980s, when I coincidentally worked at Swan Hunter, but I would like to take this opportunity to underline that the decline in shipbuilding in the northeast was down to Margaret Thatcher and not my ineptitude as a draughtsman. Honest!

  The men unfurl the sail and we tack across the water. It’s amazing how the boat glides through the waves; I feel this is how we are meant to fish. It’s so natural and more like the poetry of fly-fishing that I love so much. It is also in complete contrast to the big white petrol-guzzling craft we went out in yesterday. I stare at Hassan, in awe of him for building this boat. As we sail across the sea I turn to him on camera and say, ‘This really is an amazing dhow boat, so beautiful and perfect for catching reef fish. I understand you built it yourself?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he says.

  My pupils dilate. WTF? ‘Oh? A little bird told me that you had built it.’

  ‘No, a local businessman built and paid for it.’

  ‘Did you have any hand in it at all?’

  ‘No.’

  Basically he’d spun me a right old yarn until he realised he was going to be on camera and it might tie him in knots later.

  But whatever the genesis of the dhow boat, one thing is irrefutable: Hassan and his friends know how to fish. I’ve never seen anything like it. They work the lines not only with their hands but also with their feet, playing the fish like puppets on strings. Their feet and hands all bear the scars of their work but over time the skin has hardened and they feel no pain. Each of them pulls up four fish, sometimes two at a time, without ever tangling the lines; it’s an incredible feat. They are the masters, with extraordinary coordination and great strength to fight not only the fish but also gusts of wind and lumpy water. They make it look easy but I assure you it is not.

  I’m hoping to catch a grouper or red snapper but first I have to don the traditional dhow fishermen dress. Well, it’s more of a skirt or sarong that fits from the midriff to the ankles. I feel like David Beckham. In this part of the country it is shameful for men to show their legs, which is unfortunate because I have been told I have lovely legs. Peter Prada needs to cover his; in fact, I don’t think they have ever seen the
light of day. Alistair’s are like pipe cleaners and Craig has Kiwi cankles. But my legs are shapely, like Richard O’Brien’s, only younger.

  I put on my welding gloves to protect my actor’s hands. Hassan explains that fishing without gloves allows him to feel every movement of the fish so he knows exactly when to pull the line up. (I guess it’s a bit like a rider keeping a gentle contact with the horse’s mouth to make small adjustments in speed and direction.) He confiscates the gloves – if I’m going to be a dhow fisherman I need to feel the fish and understand the technique.

  We drop anchor at the edge of a reef, lowering bait to the bottom. A grouper fish tends to come out of its cave, take the bait and then try to swim back into the reef. You have to take a grouper quickly otherwise you’ll lose it.

  Mo gets a bite and heaves up a chakashangu, or a green job fish. I’m up next – at first I think it’s a snapper but I’ve actually hooked a coral fish. I heave it up. Its colours are a stunning palate of purples, reds and yellows. It’s part of the grouper family and it’s the best-looking fish we catch all day, not that looks count.

  Hand lining looks easy but it’s a technique that takes time to master. The boys are pulling them up like they are going out of fashion and I am losing them at the same pace. They catch job fish, snapper and emperor fish. Hassan gives me a quick tutorial: ‘If you lift [the line] quickly then [the fish] will know it’s a trap, so you have to lift it slowly.’ His words of wisdom work. I casually pull up the bait and bam! I get a second bite. As I wind in the line with my hands, the fish fights and the nylon tears into my skin. I think Hassan wants me to have ‘dhow lines’ on my hands as marks of honour so that I can look at the scars in years to come and remember this incredible day. I ignore the burning and concentrate on winning the battle.