The tide and the weather combined to make today a good fishing day again. So, having had a week or so off fishing, we hit the wharf with renewed energy. And I caught nothing, did not even have a decent sized take on my bait! Dave caught two little ones that we put back to grow bigger, hopefully really fast!
Then it was the usual day of cut the lawn, do the washing etc.
This evening we went back to the wharf for the sundown squiding. There were already two people fishing when we arrived, and the sunset was really truely magnificent.
Then my rod went mad. Catching a squid is rather like reeling in a wet plastic bag. They drag through the water, and only fight a little as they are actually landed. (The jigs we use for squid have no hooks on them, just a row of spikes, so you can't catch fish on them, at all.) Well, as I said, my rod bent over at an amazing angle, and started jerking. "What you got??" asked the local fisherman. "It's too far out to see!" says me, thinking 'how am I supposed to know, you live here.' Then I started to panic, and asked in a really girlie way what I should do next. Just reel it in slowly, keep the line taught, I think they said. So I reeled and reeled and pulled and got a squid into the net Dave was holding ready at water level, as I reckon it would have broken my line.
Back home it weighed in at 1,850kg, certainly the biggest one we have caught so far. We finally came home with 5 squid, with Dave again catching more than his fair share, but mine was the biggest. So hopefully squid is going to be on the menu often.
Hi Barbs.
ReplyDeleteI had a maiden aunt in England who looked rather like your catch, big eyes and her nose always seemed to be running. Reminded me of the Giles Aunt.
A Battlemother! (okay, wrong author but close 'nough I reckon)
ReplyDeleteGood job, Barbs. That's a solid meal for two indeed.
I hope I do not meet the maiden aunt at dusk on the pier! It was enough of an effort landing that one.
ReplyDeleteI reckon it will feed us for a bit, even the tentacles looked enough for a meal, they were long and sticky enough.
Since I know you like to hear about different ways to catch squid...
ReplyDeleteThe news here in Japan recently had a short piece about the opening of a squid-catching season somewhere here. This particular region uses traps. Take two fairly large rings -- they never showed one beside a person, so I'm guessing on size, but maybe 80 centimeters or a meter? -- and space them out with some shorter crossbraces so that you have a squat cylinder. Now put a reasonably fine mesh net over the whole thing, with some one-way funnels in the sides for the squids to swim inside. Basic traps.
The bait, though, was really different. It looked like a small bush to me, and the commentator asked if the squid eat it. The fishers looked at him like he was nuts, and said no, the squid use them to lay eggs. Apparently the squid swim in to lay eggs on these bushes, then can't get out. The fishers explained that you pull the trap up, take out the squids, and then put the eggs back so that they can hatch.
Since they showed us a wharf covered in these traps, I'm assuming they are reasonably effective. Now all you need is bushes that your local squid want to use for laying their eggs, and you'll be in business.
I love the whole idea of the bush traps, that will hopefully remove the danger of an ink filled face as we can dangle the trap just out of the water until the ink sac is empty! Any idea what sort of bush??
ReplyDeleteHah! I had no idea, but Dr. Google pointed me at a scholarly article studying these traps! http://cpi.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/sps/sps19/19-3.pdf seems to indicate several possibilities, although what I saw was probably Japanese bush clover (as if I knew what that was before reading this report -- or after!). Really fascinating -- apparently there's been a lot of research on these traps.
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