Damn, I love fishin’

I thought about turning that title into an acronym but decided otherwise.

Some time ago, my good friend and fellow volunteer, Lesieli, told me that her host father wanted to invite me on an overnight fishing trip. I was hesitant to accept, and not because I wasn’t interested in the prospect of fishing; truth be told as I get older in years, I find an eight-hour night of sleep is essential in my life and daily routine. Nevertheless, I reluctantly accepted. The boat for our voyage was about the size of 1.5 modern American SUVs, so, it is a small boat. Luck was not on our side that night as the ocean was rocking, the thunder/lightning clapping, and the single light on our boat was a small lantern jerry-rigged to a car battery. Regardless of how terrified I was during this adventure, I kept thinking to myself how wild of a scenario this was that I found myself in. This was something I would remember for the rest of my life, something I could tell my future friends and family about. After about an hour of bulldozing through waves we came to our stop we would spend the next 10+ hours. I noticed there wasn’t any fishing gear on the boat, or at least I thought there wasn’t.

Ula, Lesieli’s host father, opened a bucket and within the bucket a toil of fishing string with a hook and sinker attached to the end of the line. He chopped up a dead fish, attached the fish to a hook and through it in the ocean, letting it fall what I would estimate to be 100+ feet, to the bottom of the ocean (an unsettling number). Ula taught me the basics, bob it every once and a while, if you feel a bite give an extremely aggressive jerk (also, don’t sit in the path of said jerk because if you do you’re getting clocked in the face) and most importantly, don’t wrap the line around your hand for obvious reasons (there are sea monsters out there). And that was it. No fancy reels, no fancy fishing bait, just a line, weight, hook, bait, and a dream. After an hour or so, Ula reeled in his first catch, a freaking barracuda. Truth be told I didn’t catch a damn thing that night. Furthermore, I actually passed out around 1am and woke up around 7am, soaking wet. When we got back to shore, I remember thinking how alluringly simple this was, I was hooked on the idea of it and the very next day I went to town and bought my own line, hook, and sinker.

Naturally the first location I tried to catch my own sea monster was the ocean. I don’t own a boat so instead I walked along the coastline near my house and found the little cliff that I like to tuli hopo (cliff jump). It stands around 10-15 feet above to the water, depending on the tide, and is around 20-feet deep. The water is clear enough I can actually watch the fish debate whether or not my bait (a chicken hot dog) is worth the bite. To my surprise, the fish loved the chicken dogs. But also to my surprise the fish were extremely talented at eatong the bait without taking the hook. It took three days, probably around 12-hours in total, to catch my first fish. While it wasn’t a sea monster barracuda, and honestly it was barely big enough to eat, I felt on top of the moon having caught it. I went out a few more days the following week, catching equally as wimpy fish, but everything would change when a local man in my village decided to show me the lagoon.

Vava’u is incredibly hilly, and my side of the island is the hilliest of them all. With that being said, the trek to get to the ocean is one that I’m literally sore from every time I do it. Longomapu is in the middle of both the ocean and Vava’u’s largest lagoon. I had been to the lagoon only once so far. Machete in hand I just kind of whacked away until I got the base of it; like the ocean, it’s an incredibly steep descent. My friend however showed me a much safer and easier route. I say safer but honestly every time I do it I slip out and land on my butt. Once we got to the base of the lagoon he asked me for a hotdog, I figured this was our bait. What he did next blew my mind. He took his shirt off, put it on a small run off of water, and placed the hot dog on top of the shirt. After a minute, prawns (mohi in Tongan) started to devour the glizzy. He told me to grab a side of the shirt, counted to three in Tongan, “taha, ua, tolu”, and we lifted it up.

There must’ve been 100 prawns in the shirt, enough bait to last hours. He threw the hand line in the lagoon and after only two throws he pulled in his first fish. Having spent countless hours in the blazing sun in the following weeks I let out some obscenities at just how easy this man made it look; on top of all that we were in the cool shade with a nice breeze bouncing of the lagoons surface. After a few hours we called it a day. I packed out the day’s catches (all attached to a stick) and headed home. Some local boys in my village taught me how to scale, gut, and cook the fish. A fun and rewarding process. We all chowed down and that was that.

I went out fishing the next day. And then the next, and the next. I decided every time I went out I would walk to a new spot. Hiking along the rim of the lagoon must be one of the most enjoyable and beautiful things I have done thus far in Tonga. Don’t get me wrong, I love my village, but being able to escape and not be seen for a few hours has been nice. Well, except for the one time a dude appeared out of the depth of the lagoon just feet away from me while spearfishing, “oh my God.. hello, Kamaroni”. Perhaps spear fishing is next.