I think everyone has a mate like Scotty. I certainly do. I met him on the bus to Orewa when we were both young and foolish and on crutches after motorcycle accidents.
I’ve always reckoned a man is rich if he has a few mates around who’d stand by him through anything, and Scotty is certainly one of them. So despite being the subject of this column he remains a true and valued friend … down to the little eccentricities that seem to come out only when he’s on the water.
When he gets on the water he reminds me of my father, who was about as much use on a boat as a wheelbarrow. Let me first introduce you to his fishing style, which he practises to perfection.
An eggbeater reel on a Warehouse two-guide rod, fished with the drag backed right off. Every so often he’ll whip the rod it back, crying “Christ did you see the way that pulled line off,” as the slack drag lets line peel off and the fish spits the hook.
It then becomes only a matter of time before a wayward jack mackerel picks up the mile of twisted, free flowing nylon and wraps it around every other line beneath the boat.
Neither is buying flash fishing tackle his thing. He once came to a fishing trip to the Coromandel with one rusted Kahle hook, that had been attached to his line since the last fishing trip. I think that had taken place sometime shortly before Rob Muldoon became Prime Minister.
“Oh no I’ve lost me hook,” was the inevitable plaintive cry. “There’s some in my fishing kit,” I offered. I didn’t really mean for him to uplift the box of hooks, select one for his line, then place the full box back in his kit. What a beaut.
His contribution to the bait that weekend was a packet of long life squid. I don’t think the manufacturers claim of “long life” meant that it could be opened, then left in a plastic bin in the garage for three weeks before use. Whhheeee that had the boys retching over the side.
I went fishing with Scotty and his dad once, and let’s just say the apple did not fall far from that tree. The boat was his Dad’s pride and joy, about 13ft long and supplied with enough horsepower to get it to the moon. Faced with this evil handling, tempestuous monster, no one was brave enough to actually push the throttle open, so we wallowed along with the bow pointing skywards as we headed to our fishing spot at trolling speed. We anchored up, while both of them fished with Warehouse eggbeaters, the drag released off and every few minutes cried “Christ did you see the way that pulled line…”
Underwater, the fish were more likely to become tangled in the miles of snaking nylon than fall onto a hook, and we came home with a mighty catch of Zilch. I often wondered if a Scotty & Father fishing trip had been the inspiration for drift netting.
Things only got worse when Scotty decided his own boat was the go. An old plywood thing “powered” by a 30 year old Blueband Merc that never really wanted to get out of bed in the morning.
After much cranking and fussing it would eventually start to catch and wind up. I never could work out why, when sitting in the wash close to a lee shore, my mate would first haul up the anchor, then start the outboard. Or try to start the outboard, as the case may be. That caused a few occasions where, like my old sailing skipper used to say “You coulda cut washers off me ringpiece…”
The first time it wouldn’t start, he proudly unearthed the boat’s auxiliary - an air cooled TAS. Now these outboards were originally responsible for at least half the earth’s air pollution problems and were noisy enough be heard by longhaul 747s as they passed overhead. Despite all the fuss, they were slightly less effective at propulsion than a kitchen eggbeater.
And Scotty’s had been lovingly preserved for years, lying in the bilge up by the bow wrapped in some salt-water soaked towels. It seemed reluctant to start, despite this care and attention. Fortunately the Blue Band got its nose out of joint about this and decided to kick into life, sputtering, belching clouds of blue and rattling like packet of Jaffas on the Orewa Picture Theatre’s sloping wooden floors
When the boat finally hit the dock we were once again fishless. And for some reason, I was always busy on the weekends I was invited out again.
But typically, you know, often when we’ve fished in a competition together, the bugger’s beaten me. Must be that soft drag setting …. or maybe he has better hooks. It’s not really true that someone up there hates me. Is it?
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