Trevor Hunter with his Fryan 16 footer and the David Brown tractor that was made the same year he was born.
(This first appeared in the Dominion Post, December 9, 2009)
TREVOR HUNTER reckons he has just the right technique for scaling fish.
You take a highway, preferably SH1, get a boat, put some fish in it, put the boat on the trailer, and then tow it down the highway till the axle breaks, the boat rolls over, and the fish spill out onto the asphalt at 100 kilometres an hour. It works, Trevor says, but it’s bloody hard on the boat.
The upside of this technique is that if you’re insured, it’s a chance to buy an even better boat. And trailer.
Trevor’s replacement for his deaded Warrior fibreglass boat, is his current 16 foot Fryan aluminium boat.
The Warrior was a lake boat, he says, being wood covered with fibreglass.
“It was quite a heavy boat and launching off the beach was fraught with difficulties. I got stuck a couple of times.”
The Fryan is a lot less trouble to get going he says.
“I bought a 1954 David Brown tractor to take it to the beach, and we just launch off the beach with no great drama.”
Trevor, who works as a paramedic with the Order of St John, moved to Otaki in 1994, and then down to the beach in 2002. He says it is 12 minutes from his house to the sea with his tractor.
“I’ve seen people down here with big flash, heavy boats getting bogged.”
“That’s why I got the Fryan. It’s light, and aluminium is much more suited to the corrosion of the sea air and salty stuff.”
Besides, his Warrior was a bad luck boat, Trevor says. Well, he blames the boat.
One day he and his mate Grant McNabb were doing some trawling. The main motor had broken down and they were relying on the auxiliary engine.
“It was a five horsepower Honda and was probably worth more than the boat was.”
They were just out in front of the Otaki Surf Club, he turned the boat, and the engine disappeared.
He says there was a stunned silence on the boat.
“I didn’t say a word. Grant was up front and he said, what happened? I said, `fell off’.
Trevor said he didn’t see any point in screaming or yelling.
”It was gone.
“Someone – namely some bloke called Trevor – hadn’t tightened the lugs on the back of it. Under full power driving forward it was fine. But when I went to turn it towards the coast the whole thing just disappeared. It was most embarrassing.”
“Grant wanted to dive in and get it. I said, if you can go down there and get it and tread water with an outboard motor on your shoulder, you’re pretty good.
“The surf club members went out and dived and dived for it but they couldn’t find it. It’s only in about 30 foot of water … maybe it just kept on going.” Trevor says coming in without power was a little fraught. It didn’t help that he didn’t have any oars either.
“We were at the mercy of the breakers, which thankfully kept us square on.”
“Coming in you have to bring it in on the back of the wave. It’s the opposite of surfing. you sit on the back of the it.”
He’s seen a few big boats flipped over after being hit sideways.
“Getting the boat into the water is easy. It’s getting the boat out of the water is the bit where you need to know what you’re doing.”
For Trevor, going out on the boat for a fishing trip is enforced fun.
“One of my theories on fishing is that if you wake up on a Sunday morning and decide to have a day at home and do nothing, after a couple of hours you feel guilty and you start pottering around doing something.
“If you’re going to go fishing for the day, it’s not really important that you catch fish. When you’re out there there’s nothing else you can do except relax. It’s a little haven on the sea. Catching any fish is a bonus.”
Trevor says the species he sees the most of are snapper, gurnard and kahawai and with by-catches of a few species of shark. There’s the odd kingfish as well.”
He may be the skipper, but Trevor says he’s 2IC when it comes to the big ones.
“My father in law caught the biggest kingfish, and the biggest snapper, about 15 pounds went to some guy called Apse.”
But the fish are secondary to the fishing for Trevor.
He likes just sitting back and looking at the coast.
“Me and a mate will be out fishing for six hours and just lie back looking at the coast and talking about absolute rubbish, and you can do it non-stop.”
It’s not a bad way to see some interesting stuff too.
“Dolphins are quite common. And one day we were out fishing when a couple of orcas started playing with us.
“I was heading across towards them to have a closer look … the next thing they popped up right beside us. Then they went under, and popped up again on the other side. I thought, god, where’s that tail going to go?”
“Plus there’s all the other boaties. We always touch base – `what have ya caught, how’s it going, how deep it is here, what’s the water temperature … oh yeah, good’ and move on again.”
Trevor’s source of all that info is his Humminbird m12 fishing system and he has a handheld Uniden VHS radio for telling lies over great distances.
About the only thing he doesn’t really like about his boat is the name.
It came with the boat and he wanted to change it, but an old salt said it was bad luck to do that so he is stuck with First Fruits. (Actually, it is First Fruits on one side, and First Fruts on the other). “Who would call a boat First Fruits? It’s pretty bad.”
Since his run-in with the overboard outboard, he makes sure he has two good engines, and always carries oars. There are two lifejackets for him and whoever he designates as 2IC, and two buoyancy aids.
“They’re for the people who aren’t quite as important.”
His fishing gear is from Otaki Hunting and Fishing and he uses the US-made Penn reels. “You can get some Chinese-made stuff that’s horrible. The Penns are good and reliable. “I’ve had some cheaper ones, and things always fall off and wear out on them.”
Trevor also opts for braided fishing line rather than nylon.
“I use to pooh-pooh this braid thing, but it’s so much more accurate than nylon. You can feel the fish nibbling on your bait with braid.
“It’s dearer, and it tangles worse. If you’ve got four of you fishing, and two catch kahawai and they round the boat and you get tangled up, it’s a hell of a job to untangle. But the bonuses far outweigh the negatives.”
His boat has a main Suzuki 40 horsepower outboard, and a Suzuki four as his auxiliary. Having seen the results of what can happen when a motors pack up, he says he makes sure they’re serviced every year.
Another thing he always checks is that his bung is in. He learned an interesting lesson about the value of that when he was boating on Lake Wanaka one time.
He and his mates got the boat off the trailer onto the lake and he was standing in it at the front when he noticed the horizon was starting to go up.
He looked back and there there was a quickly growing pond in the back of the boat. Stern? It was bloody well serious. So Trevor, being the quick thinking person he is gunned the engine and as the boat sped across the lake the water started draining.
How he got the bung in while also steering the boat at high speed is another story. But the important thing, he says, is always put your bung in.
Trevor indicates the length of fish that has never been inside his boat.
