by Robson Green
At twenty-two pounds, my beautiful fish is easily the biggest I’ve hunted with a spear. Colin is thrilled and convinced I’ve smashed a spear-fishing record.
‘Now, that’s a fantastic fish. A winning catch, Robson!’ he says.
It’s all down to my tutor. Colin has the experience and knowledge of a true expert; he is a special person who cares deeply about what he’s doing and wants to do it as well as he can. Some people have a notion that we don’t belong down there in the world below, but I think as a species we are naturally drawn to water. It’s not so much the need to escape or get away from it all, but perhaps more a need to get back to how it was. My father swam in the North Sea most of his life. Maybe he was subconsciously freeing himself from chains of oppression. But one thing I know is that when you enter water you cross a border, one that is mysterious, sometimes dangerous, but in the end always magical. Whatever it was he was always happy and now I’m ecstatic.
*
As we head back we are in agreement that there’s no harm in casting a line. Immediately we’re in – it’s a yellowfin tuna and it’s a ninety-pound monster. It’s the biggest yellowfin I’ve ever seen, let alone caught. The lack of pollution and water temperature, which is about 17 degrees, makes conditions perfect for pelagic species, such as tuna, dorado and marlin, to thrive. I give the yellowfin to Colin’s deckhand – at that size it should last him and his family a couple of years!
What better way to end the day than by eating what we caught? Our piscatorial smorgasbord comprises blue fish, black jack and dog snapper – it’s an anglers’ version of a Renaissance feast.
Kenny G
Today I’m taking part in a ‘fish fry’, which is basically a local knees-up disguised as a fishing competition. We meet at the Saints Club in town – the Saints (St Helenians) love to fish. My teammates are Justin Wade and Adrian Henry, known as Kenny G. Not the cheesy 1980s sax player, but hopefully a great fisherman. They are both sullen-faced and kicking their heels; as it turns out they have been reluctantly shoved into something they really don’t want to do. To them, fishing with me is worse than national service, being made to dress up as women or being sent to Rochdale. I say, ‘You guys really don’t want to be here, do you?’ They shake their heads miserably. OK, so I’ve got my work cut out today to jolly along two kids who don’t want to play with me. I tell them that losing is NOT an option. We are Team Extreme, living the dream – yes, I am as cheesy as my pop career and Kenny G suggest. Cue 1980s sax music as we walk down towards the ocean as Team Extreme.
As the ice starts to thaw between us – and believe me, I expelled a lot of hot air to achieve the melt – I realise their initial reluctance was actually a case of shyness. They were both completely star-struck . . . No, not really, but incidentally I am well known on the island of Saint Helena. Many women approached me (yes, they were older; they’re always older) and showed me their VHS recordings of Soldier, Soldier and Catherine Cookson’s The Gambling Man. DVD players haven’t quite made it to these parts, but I have.
We head down to the coast. We’ve got three hours to fish for our target: grouper. There is a prize for the biggest, smallest and largest number of fish caught.
‘I see we’re using snapper as bait, Justin.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘They’re squirrel fish.’
‘What have you been smoking? They’re snapper, matey.’
These boys may have highly qualified jobs as marine engineers but they just make things up as they go along. As we arrive at Justin’s favourite fishing spot there’s a problem as we discover another team has nabbed it. One of them is Justin’s girlfriend, and seeing as she’s no stranger to the sweet trolley there’s no arguing. We are left with a small pier to fish off. The boys handline and I have a rod. I’ve never won a competition before. I’m not the competitive type, but today I’ll make an exception.
Our neighbours appear to be catching but Justin’s mind doesn’t seem entirely on the game. In fact he’s far more interested in his girlfriend than he is in grouper. Luckily Kenny G’s all over it – fishing like a man possessed. He pulls up a medium-sized grouper and it’s beautiful, with its speckled patterning and sharp fins. I handle it up carefully as the dorsal spines can do some serious damage. It’s well equipped to defend itself but it’s also equipped to attack, with its cavernous mouth, powerful jaws and razor-sharp teeth. Kenny pulls out another beauty – a three-pound rock hind grouper. This guy may be a moody bastard in the morning but he can certainly fish.
Justin and I have so far caught bog-all. But just when I think all hope has disappeared, something explodes onto my bait. Sadly it’s a jack trevally – I’ve never been so sad to see a fish. I put it back and start again. Soon Kenny G has another fish on the end of his line – a seven-pound grouper. He may not have the other Kenny G’s blonde highlights but this man has a magic all of his own. I feel sure Team Extreme is going to romp to victory. It’s all about teamwork. Kenny G’s not so sure.
As we gather at the Saints Club for the weigh-in it becomes crystal-clear we’re up against some stiff competition, so I try to find out from organiser Suzie how Team Extreme is doing. I hypnotise her with my signature blue eyes – she wobbles for a moment, before giving me a look that could freeze my chestnuts and hides the figures. I’m asked to hand out the prizes and guess what? We didn’t catch the most fish. We didn’t get the smallest or the biggest. But the runner-up for largest grouper goes to Mr Robson Green, and being the narcissist that I am I go completely wild. I take the award and accept it but then I see Kenny G backlit and hazy and I have to confess to everyone that I didn’t catch any of the fish – it was all down to him.
The Old Geordie and the Sea
I’m slightly apprehensive this morning. I’m back with my mate Colin Chester and we’re going marlin fishing. A Makaira nigricans would be a huge catch and we’ve got an unnervingly small boat; the giants out there could do a lot of damage to it and, more importantly, me. I’ll be hiding behind burly Colin if a marlin jumps on the boat. I’ve left him for dead with a Galapagos shark once before, and I’ll gladly do it again.
The topography of the island is also the reason fishing is unbelievably good here. Ascension Island is situated on the Mid-Atlantic Range, a divergent tectonic plate boundary located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the longest mountain range in the world, Ascension is essentially a mountain peak that rises 10,000 feet up from the sea bed. Because of this you don’t have to go too far out to find deep-sea fish.
Here in the rich Atlantic waters, blue marlin grow to record-breaking sizes and are among the fastest and most powerful fish in the ocean. If anyone can catch one, my new buddy and I can, as we are the angling equivalent of Starsky and Hutch, Butch and Sundance – or is it Laurel and Hardy? To my amusement, Colin decides to remove the fighting chair: ‘It’s a wonderful way to fish for marlin as you’re in direct contact with the fish. It brings us back to our roots, fishing like the old boys did in the frontier days,’ he says.
Colin shows me what the pressure will be like on my body when we hook a marlin; as he pulls the rod down, my back groans. It’s a lot of pressure. So we are going back to the days when men were men and fish were frightened. Colin tells me I need to ‘man up’ and I say, ‘That’s going to be difficult – I wear make-up for a living.’ Our banter continues and the morning disappears. Soon we’ve been trawling for three hours but haven’t caught a thing. Once again I feel like Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, waiting and waiting. OK, he did it for eighty-four days, but we live in a far more impatient age nowadays. Maybe the waters off Ascension Island are fallible?
After what feels like an eternity there’s a sign: dolphins. These beautiful mammals always bring luck, and suddenly something attacks the lure. Colin and the deckhand signal the driver to speed up the boat. I know I’m into something big by the sound of the reel – it’s an angling symphony – and on the end of the line is the Holy Grail of game fish.
‘It’s a marl
in!’
Colin holds on to me to stop me disappearing overboard. I’m hooked on to one of the largest and fastest ocean-going predators – if you want to know what it feels like, cast your line of 150 pounds and test it at full tension on a high-speed train. I have never done this and neither should you, but you get the idea.
As I tighten the line, the marlin explodes out of the water 200 yards ahead of me. It’s ten feet long and 450 pounds of dynamic power. His bill alone, which he uses to slash through dense schools of fish like a carnivorous gladiator, is at least three feet in length. No superlative can accurately describe the sight of this creature other than ‘awesome’. He takes off sideways at about 50 m.p.h. – I can’t even travel at 5 m.p.h. in water and I’m a bloody good swimmer! I’m reeling in with everything I’ve got – I shout for Justin to turn the boat to the left.
‘Quickly!’
It’s enormously powerful so I dig deep and turn the reel with all my might. I am instantly reminded of Santiago again – it wasn’t so long ago that guys would fight a marlin on a hand line. If I did that I think this beast would dislocate both my arms from their sockets. The one thing you can do when hooked into such a predator is: nothing. It becomes a test of strength and endurance between hunter and quarry. We both try to exhaust each other. He starts to tire and the retrieve begins. If I let this line go slack for even a split second the fish is off.
After thirty-five minutes there’s colour. In the next thirty seconds I will be up close and personal with the greatest fighting fish on the planet, but at this precise second my rod whiplashes and I’m sent reeling back. He’s off. Gone. And I am totally and utterly empty. The feeling is an overpowering sense of loss and failure, an emotion that I am sure is rooted in the hunter not being able to provide food for his family and the pending disappointment it will bring. I can’t believe it: twenty metres away and we lost him. It’s hard to take but this marlin has got the better of us today.
Colin says sagely, ‘There’s always another marlin out there to catch, Robson.’
And he’s right: there are plenty more fish in the sea, especially around here. I go to bed early and dream of the mystical creature that got away.
Green Mountain
Ascension Island is mostly dry and volcanic but rising up in its centre is something very different: a green mountain called, er . . . Green Mountain. It’s where I’m heading today.
The mountain is a man-made forest in the clouds that generates rain. When the early explorers first found the island they discovered they couldn’t live here because there is no natural source of water. It’s is thought that, in the nineteenth century, some bright sparks, possibly Charles Darwin himself, conjured up the idea of the forest, with vegetation from around the globe, in a grand experiment to see if they could create an environment conducive to habitation. It truly is a miraculous place.
I’m meeting the conservationist who looks after Green Mountain, Stedson Stroud. Stroud, as well as having an extensive knowledge of botanical life, also knows a thing or two about fish, particularly moray eels. So off we trot to a weird landscape of volcanic rocks by the sea.
Our bait is rotting tuna heads, which eels have a penchant for. As I dangle my stinky bait in the water – waiving it around a bit to get maximum blood in the water – I’m thinking this is hardly the poetry of fly-fishing. Robert Redford would definitely have turned down directing the moray eel version of A River Runs Through It. I’d do it. I’d do anything. But it’s not long before we get some interest in the form of a spotted moray eel. Quickly I bring the gaff down and try to hook it, but he gets away. They’re slippery sods. I see another one and pull it out the water; Stedson hooks it up onto a rock and then rather surprisingly lands some thundering blows to stop it going back in. Yep, that’s stopped it right in its tracks – Stedson isn’t the hippy I thought he was. But blows to the head are the only way to dispatch a moray eel. It isn’t pretty but if their teeth get hold of you they will sink right in and they won’t come out. They use the same principle as a fishing hook: they hook around the prey and have barbs that you can’t pull out. These eels are vicious, but in spite of that I still think they are beautiful. And apparently very tasty.
Later, as Stedson cooks the eel over a fire on the beach, he explains that moray eel tastes like Dover sole and the skin is the equivalent of pork scratchings. He uses the berries, wild rocket and other salad leaves we picked earlier on the mountain as delicious accompaniment. Eels are common fish around the world but not usually served for dinner. I think we’ll have to change that. I try the eel. It’s sensational and, you know what, it tastes just like chicken. No, Stedson’s spot on: it has the delicate succulence of Dover sole. He’s way off the mark with the pork scratchings, though.
German Shark Fishing
Tonight I’m going shark fishing and I’m apprehensive. In fact, I feel sick. A fucking cello plays over and over in my head as it did when I went mako fishing off Cape Cod. Dur-nur, dur-nur, dur-nur . . . I feel worried because I have a sixth sense that we’re going to hook one tonight.
I really don’t want to see a shark, let alone catch one, but paradoxically I’m compelled to find out more about what lies beneath these waters, however frightening. I need to discover if Ascension Island really is the Jurassic Park of fishing. And the only way to find out is to catch one of its most fearsome prehistoric creatures. Luckily the man who is going to help me catch a monster is no lightweight. He’s big, he’s German and his name is Olaf. He’s quite frankly built like a brick scheisshaus. Olaf owns Harmattan, the only other sports boat on Ascension. He fires up the engine. Oh, God – this is really happening.
As we head to a shark feeding ground about a mile out, I try to appear casual, nonchalant even.
‘The biggest fish I ever caught was a 500-pound blue marlin off the Azores,’ I say, and Olaf nods, seemingly with angling approval – we’re bonding.
‘On a good night,’ he replies, ‘I would catch a fish four times that size.’
I nod with angling approval, disguising the fact in my mind I’ve plucked a pistol out of thin air and just shot myself.
‘The largest shark I’ve seen up close was an eleven-foot, four-hundred-pound reef shark in the Gulf of Mexico,’ I say, beginning to hate the sound of my own voice. For pity’s sake, Robson, put the spade down and step away from the hole.
‘Really? Wow!’ says Olaf. ‘Well, tonight, my friend, you are going to see something three or four times the size of that.’
Shit. The. Bed.
According to Olaf there are some very ancient species in this part of the ocean: mako sharks, thresher sharks, and Galapagos sharks – like the one who tried to eat Colin’s hands the other day. But also under these inky waters lurks a true dinosaur whose design hasn’t changed for nearly 200 million years. The particular monster we’re looking for is a sixgill shark, or cow shark.
Like many deep-sea creatures, the rarely-seen sixgill is known to take daily vertical migrations, moving up to the epipelagic zone (the surface) at night and returning to the mesopelagic zone (the middle) of the ocean before dawn. The sixgill, which has six gill slits instead of the usual five, is one of the few surviving members of the Hexanchidae family. All its other relatives, apart from the dog tooth and Greenland shark, are only found in fossils. Sixgill sharks get up to around twenty feet here, which is too big to land (can you imagine?), but if we get it to the side of the boat and set it free it counts as a catch. That said, getting it to the side is down to me, and the impending sense of dread is suffocating. At this moment in time all I can think about is the bloke on the Discovery Channel who had his calf bitten off in an attack. This really isn’t a safe situation.
Olaf hands me some of the most extreme gear I’ve ever seen. There are buckles, ropes and a codpiece to rest the rod. So, just to recap, I’m on a boat in the pitch-dark in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, wearing some seriously kinky fishing gear with a hulk of a German – we all know what they’re like – and to make
things worse I’m about to invite Jaws to the party. Olaf manhandles me again: ‘I’m testing the pressure, ready for you to reel in a sixgill,’ he says. But it feels more like he’s giving me a heart attack and a hernia all at the same time.
‘Please be gentle with me, Olaf,’ I whimper.
I’m only a five-foot-nine actor weighing ten and a half stone (I know, I know, there are girls heavier than me). He’s a bear of a man, six-foot-four and probably nineteen stone of pure muscle. There’s no way I’m messing with this SOB; he could break me in two with his little finger. Forget Popeye and spinach, I think it’s all the prehistoric fish he’s been eating – he’s pumped up with Omega-3.
Olaf places a massive piece of yellowfin tuna on the hook. I throw it in. There is total silence as the bait descends into the dark depths. The tension is set. Olaf ties an extra knot at the small of my back just in case. I wait. I wait. I wait. The only sound is of the water lapping gently against the boat’s hull – click, click, click. I look into the night beneath. How many sea-monsters are lurking down there? I’m reminded of scary stories from my childhood in the north of England, like the Loch Ness Monster or Jenny Greenteeth, who stole people’s children and drowned them. I think that’s partly why we’re so fascinated by this other world, all the myths and legends that surround lakes, rivers and oceans are as important as what we scientifically know. Fishermen are very superstitious people, you know. In fact, fishermen and sailors both believe that bananas on boats bring bad luck. It’s true, because bananas give off spores that spoil other fruit, which would have been a disaster on board ship back in the 1700s: your whole fruit and veggie supply would perish. That’s why you should never put bananas with other fruit but instead place them in a separate bowl. I’m dead useful, aren’t I?
