Fishing

This blog provides some background to fishing back in the day, which, if you can be bothered to read, will help in future blogs that are more funny and hopefully interesting.

There are so many tales about this, all true and firstly very, very sad.

I will start with the sad bit.

As we Islanders (Someone who is born on the Isle of Wight is a Caulkhead; I will explain why in a later blog,) and we refer to the 1970s as 'back in the day.'

Back then, there were fish in the sea, lots of. Regrettably, over the last 50 years, the fish stocks have been decimated by greedy commercial short-time overfishing and pathetic governments from so many countries who, in my and many others' opinion, don't give a damn. All words, no action, and 'We will meet again next year to talk about it again.'

This has gone on for years and years and still is; what will be left in our seas for our grandchildren? A lot of pollution, no fish, no whales; the way things are going, that is what they will inherit from our generation.

The problem is that only coastal areas know what is going on; people in cities don't know or care as long as fish are in the supermarket.

They will arrange protests over so many things, marches, blocking roads, etc., but is there ever a march against polluting rivers, overfishing? Never.

Rant over, back to the fun stuff.

Back in the day, Dad decided to get a boat.

Nothing grand, just a 12-foot (that is 3.6 meters) with an outboard engine. The outboard was a Seagull outboard motor.

It was a very basic type of outboard and would be totally reliable if looked after properly, which most were not, hence they got a bad reputation.

The Seagull outboard, on full power, was about as fast as a good man rowing very fast, but if you got them going, they did get you there, eventually.

They were started with a 'pull cord' that you wrapped around the top and gave it a mighty heave which turned the engine over, and with luck, started it.

In all fairness, the Seagull outboards were never designed as long-distance outboards, and the fuel tank would only take you about a mile before it needed filling up.

Nowadays the modern outboards have big fuel tanks that hold many gallons of fuel and are not part of the actual outboard but are in the boat, so can be changed easily.

But hey, they were light, easy to carry, and got you there.

Dad and I used to take our little boat down the bay on calm evenings and go out fishing.

As I said, back then there were lots of fish and come April, the Mackerel used to come in, millions of them in huge shoals.

You could see the shoals from the cliff, and when you were out in the boat, the sea was clouded with Mackerel shit.

We used to fish with feathers tied to the hooks, and back then as soon as you dropped the line over, you would get six at a time.

We only took a basket full, then I would sell them door to door for sixpence each. A shilling if they wanted them gutted and the heads taken off!

As I said in my previous bike blogs, British Motorbikes were being swept away by Japanese bikes which were far better, and the same was for outboard motors.

The new Jap motors were in a different class. Faster, electric start, cheaper to run, go further, etc.

But they were bigger, obviously.

I think the Seagull was about 2 horsepower, these were 20.

So a bigger boat was needed.

The other advantage, with a bigger boat with a fast engine, is where we fished from.

Freshwater Bay gets weather; see photo at the top of the blog.

If you get a map of the world and draw a line SSW, the next landfall is the Caribbean, Florida, or South America.

See... You are learning something in my Blogs.

Now although there may be no wind, and the sea is calm, great big waves called 'swell' would roll in.

Today the surfers love it, especially if on the rare occasions there is an offshore wind, it makes the waves better for surfing, so I am told.

These conditions normally happen in the winter, but the surfer dudes are out there in their wetsuits, frost on the ground, catching the waves.

Sod that. I only ever went into the sea in August when I lived in Cyprus!

Still, different people different strokes.

Where was I, oh yes.

Now Freshwater Bay is what is called a false Bay.

That means it looks off, but really has no protection from bad weather.

Also, the mouth of the bay is shallow, then it drops off a bit then the beach.

So big swells break outside the bay, then calm down before they hit the beach.

This means that when you go out off the shore you have to get the timing right.

If you go onto YouTube, put in Freshwater Bay lifeboat, you will see what I mean, when you get it all wrong.

But going out is the easy part, getting back in is far more difficult.

Big waves, called 'rollers,' normally come in odd numbers, 5-7-9.

So when we were out, we would watch them coming along the cliff and count, then a break before the next lot.

We would hang about in the deeper water where they were just a swell then after counting head into the bay.

As I said, the Seagull was not a fast motor so it took a couple of minutes to get into the bay.

If you got the timing right, it was ok; if you didn't, you had a 3-meter wave up your stern, and you just hoped for the best.

Landing was the same, and a couple of times we got it wrong and came in broadside or upside down.

Now go back to the home page.

The white chalk cliff is called Wightways, the beach in the distance is Compton, where the hippies from the festival went nude swimming and showered under the waterfall that took the overflow from the septic tanks.

All the land from there Eastwards is called Back of the Wight, and was a graveyard for hundreds of ships in the olden days, driven ashore by wind, tide, and waves.

This one seems to have diverted from what I was going to say, that is not unusual when us Caulkheads start 'Yarning' (telling stories), but next time I will tell you about the lorry that flew through the air, and will put on the kids' story about a lobster that I wrote that is totally true.

Two for one.