Extreme Fishing (7 page)

‘It’s OK. There are two more traps,’ he says irritably.

I say, ‘It’s a bad omen; it’s a barren wasteland out there.’

I strangle him on camera when the second one is empty as well. There is one more pot and as I yank the rope up, lunch hovers into view – a couple of handfuls of what in the northeast we
call ‘shrimp’, of which you need to eat about fifty in order to consider it an appetiser. I wave one in the air.

‘A prawn. I’m so happy.’

Kim puts his face in the camera and says, ‘Extreme fishing, baby.’

No, it’s not – and don’t call me ‘baby’, punk.

Port Alberni

‘I’m really looking forward to today because I’ve never been in a fishing competition before but I think my chances are good. There has been a question
mark over my fishing ability during this show but I think a lot of questions are going to be answered today.’

I deliver the PTC by an open fire, soft-lit like a 1980s porn film.

‘Today this is my type of fishing, exactly like fly-fishing on the Coquet, the Tweed or the Spey, surrounded by peace, quiet and tranquillity . . .’

Cut to loud rock music and us roaring up the Stamp River, battering into grade-five rapids in a shallow aluminium speed-boat, its engine terrifying anything within a five-mile radius.
There’s obviously no time for poncey scenery today.

I am here to challenge the self-proclaimed Angling King of British Columbia, the Jedi Knight of steelhead fishing, Roly Hider, which is a totally made-up name and a really crap anagram. We
decide it’s the most fish that counts, not the biggest, and the loser has to swim naked in the Stamp lagoon. Roly sits cross-legged on his boat, shades down, cool as fuck, so confident in his
ability, so smug and unflappable. I do hope he got bullied at school. If I lose, the water will instantly freeze my tackle off. I
have
to win or I’ll become a castrato forever and be
forced to duet with Aled Jones on our album,
The Very Best of Songs of Praise
. (What ever happened to that show? Mum used to love Harry ‘Seagoon’ Secombe singing. I always found
it a bit surreal and he wasn’t even very good. Don’t say a word: three number ones. I was always great; it was Jerome who was tone-deaf. I carried him for years, you know. Just kidding.
Love you really, Jerome.)

It’s a good start: I have a fish on before Crap Anagram. I lose it but quickly coax another. It puts up a good fight and I have to concentrate hard to reel the fish to the boat, but I
manage it and land my first ever steelhead. Steelheads are also known as sea-run rainbow trout or salmon trout, and the only difference between them and the plain old rainbow trout is where they
spend their lives feeding and maturing. Stream-resident rainbow trout live their life entirely in freshwater, perhaps with short periods of time spent in estuaries or near-shore marine waters.
Steelheads, however, leave freshwater as juveniles and migrate long distances in the ocean, where they grow to maturity before migrating back to their original streams. As they travel to the ocean
as little’uns their scales turn a steel blue, hence their name.

I admire my steelhead. What a stunner! She is about five pounds and with the most vibrant magenta hue along her side that morphs into a stunning bronze gilt around the rest of her form. After a
quick ‘donk’ on the head it’s time to get back to work. I am in the lead against the world’s cockiest Canadian and I’m planning on it staying that way. Time ticks by
and it’s one-all, but Roly soon hooks another. It’s a fabulous fish but as he reels it towards the boat it suddenly turns and is off. Oh no, he lost it! So sad. Never mind.

Three hours and fifty minutes later, it’s two-all with ten minutes to go. I hook a fish and lose it. Damn. With only several minutes left on the clock, Roly shouts: ‘Fish on.’
He lands the steelhead during injury time and I am gutted. ‘I am not going in the drink,’ I mutter. ‘Oh, yes, I believe you are,’ he says, perking up.

Everyone is goading me from the boat. The water is a balmy seven degrees – that’s only two degrees warmer than the water that killed the passengers of the flippin’
Titanic
. I’m going to die and he only beat me by one fish. But I am a man of my word.
Stiff upper lip, Robson. For Queen and Country and the Commonwealth, including Canada, which we
still rule – suckers!

I walk in
au buff
.

‘I do this every day in Newcastle – not a problem!’

I dive in and burst out of the surface for air.

‘Fuck! Jesus! Jesus! Oh, my God!’

My testicles retract, I sing a perfect B-flat – I have never reached that note before, or since. I run out of the water using a dead salmon to protect my modesty, which is more like a mole
peeping though a set of curtains by this time.

You might think that’s the worst thing that could happen, but you’d be wrong.

The Curse of the
Ocean Pearl

From the look of the eerie trawler and its rabble crew, my instincts tell me not to board, but as usual I don’t fully tune in.

‘Robson, I’ve been looking forward to this,’ shouts Captain Bob Frumani, his voice raspy from years of hard living. It’s exactly what a killer would say, just before he
carves you up. Bob is an unforgettable man, a man on whose face are etched the frightening things he has played witness to. His eyes are haunted – he has seen too much. His crew stand behind
him like wraithy heavies from a ship long gone, except instead of wearing swashbuckling kit they are wrapped in black hoodies, which only add to the menace. Nature has played nicely with me so far
but I am now about to witness her at her most despicable. I board the
Ocean Pearl
from a small fishing boat and the cameraman, Mike Carling, the director, Jason, and the sound guy, Stuart
Bruce, follow me up the metal ladder. The associate producer isn’t coming. Why? ‘I’ve got loads of work to do here.’ I later discover he suffers from terrible seasickness.
He made the right call that day.

We’ve had sight of the weather forecast and it’s looking untidy, to say the least. Sleet and snow are predicted, so it will be not only stormy but also freezing. We are heading out
to a notorious stretch of the Pacific off the Brooks Peninsula. Explorer Captain Cook called it the ‘Cape of Storms’ and Bob does nothing to soften his punch: ‘This is serious
high seas . . . It’s like going to another planet. This is extreme fishing. I’m serious.’

As we head out I’m having serious doubts about this. I mean, come on, guys – it’s only a bloody TV show. Isn’t this too much of a gamble with all our lives? I am pacified
by the director, who is between a rock and a hard place – he has to make a show or the production company could lose a lot of money. He updates me with the weather report. The storm will be
heading north so we’ll miss the worst of it, thank God, but we’re still going to get mixed up in a gale.

I take Bob to one side to voice my concerns in private. I don’t want his burly crew to know I’m scared. We go up to the wheel-house from where he captains the trawler. As I start to
relate my fears we enter the beginnings of a two-metre swell. The vessel starts to heave up and down and rolls powerfully from side to side. Bob tells me this is nothing compared with what’s
to come. He’s really not helping.

Bob: ‘When you come out here you gotta be ready to focus because it’s high-end. If someone really doesn’t want to come fishing with me, I don’t take them. I never phone
my crew guys, I never phone ’em and say “Will you come with me?” No way. They gotta wanna be here and it’s the same as when you’re captain: you have gotta wanna be
here, so you’re absolutely at your best.’

My internal monologue cranks up.
But I don’t
want
to be here! I don’t
want
to go fishing! I am
not
at my best and no one will let me get off this fucking
boat! I wish you’d understand that!
I stay silent and swallow my frustrations.

Bob: ‘I’ve been in some very serious storms where I really thought that this wheelhouse was gonna get knocked off the boat . . . and you know, what I’m saying is, I’ve
been scared before.’

‘OK,’ I whisper.
Robson, you pillock, listen to me – if he’s been scared, you’re fucked. I mean, look at the man! He’s gnarly, nails, hard as fuck.
He’s like out of another time, where sailors wrecked four or five ships a career and that was normal.

Bob: ‘You know when you’re four hundred, five hundred miles off shore and it’s blowing so hard you can’t even hear it . . . you think that it’s peaking . . .
it’s just screaming, it’s just woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, wowowooo . . . and you think it’s peaking and then it just comes: wahhhhhhhhh . . .’

I swallow.

Bob: ‘And the whole boat’s just shaking and you literally think your wheelhouse is gonna get knocked off . . . That’s, erm . . .’ – he turns and looks me straight
in the eye – ‘. . . when you do really see God, believe me.’

I do, I see all sorts of horrible storms in those haunted grey eyes – it’s like looking into one of those snow globes all shaken up, but there’s a ship in there being gobbled
by the waves.

‘Thanks for the chat, Bob. It’s really helped.’

For fuck’s sake, I’m going to die. I’m seriously going to die. I feel light-headed, my teeth feel too big for my mouth, I’m delirious and I need to breathe, but the boat
is all over the place and I’m on board for thirty-six hours.

As we slowly head northwest towards the Cape of Storms, the waves are already four metres high and rising, just as the temperature is plummeting. Well, at least, according to
the weather report, we’re going to miss the worst of it. But somehow, as time slowly ticks on, it really doesn’t feel that way. The swell continues to rise and rise and the wind speed
increases. Bob admits this is gale force now.

‘But don’t worry, Robson, this trawler is built for a hurricane.’

I do not want to test it out
, I think to myself.

A conservative description of the ocean would be ‘lumpy’; the reality is that its peaks and troughs are about twenty feet high. It’s like driving over the tummy-lurching
Northumberland Hills at breakneck speed whilst, at the same time, being thrown violently around by some prison animal who wants you to be his bitch.

‘I thought we were missing the storm, Jason,’ I spit.

He shakes his head: ‘We’re going straight into it. The weather pattern changed at the last minute.’

I am so unimpressed. To Jason, it’s terrific news – this is his
Deadliest Catch
moment – but for Mike, Stuart and me it’s terrifying. Especially as those guys are
carrying such heavy equipment and don’t have an extra pair of hands to hold on. The wind screams. I am frothing with ire.

‘How dare you put us in this situation?!’

Boom! Boom! Waves hit the side of the boat and spray the deck. I am glad I’m wearing a survival suit: it’ll give me three minutes of important thinking time should I fall in.
That’s enough time to mentally say goodbye to everyone I know and love. The crew have located their marker buoys so I need to help them get what they’ve come for. The sablefish are
located two miles down in waters chilled by the Arctic winds. The reason why these guys risk life and limb week after week is that black cod, as it’s known in high-end Asian restaurants,
brings top dollar. On a good day, the
Ocean Pearl
can land £100,000 worth of sablefish. It’s black gold to these men, and as we all know riches can corrupt the mind . . . and
indeed it has done, because these guys are fucking mental to do this job. But not only are they addicted to the booze, the women and the lifestyle the money brings, they are also addicted to the
thrill and adventure. As these men prove, the life of a sailor hasn’t changed much over the last 500 years.

Deckhand Seamus is showing me the ropes. We need to bring up the pots that the crew baited and set a mile off the ocean floor a couple of weeks ago. A machine starts winching them up. We need to
turn into the weather to get the catch on board, and as we do so a wave smacks me in the face like an angry wench. Her hand is bitter cold. As I recover I ask Seamus at what age he started doing
this.

‘Fourteen!’ he shouts.

‘Fourteen?’
Why on earth does he do this? There must be easier ways to make a living
, I think.

‘Fucking and fishing: that’s what Dad taught me.’

Wow.

Actually, Seamus and the rest of the lads are men of a certain ilk: strong, dependent on one another, courageous, fearless, and, in a strange way, really caring. Like soldiers or miners,
brothers in arms in the face of adversity – in this case, Mother Nature. Their bond is essential because if there’s no trust they literally could die. The number of times Seamus pushes
me upright or catches me before I fall is amazing, as if he has a sixth sense for my safety. The guys work their arses off, heaving and lifting the catch onto the boat, all the while being tossed
around like toys. I suddenly understand what having your sea legs means – it’s not only being able to withstand the physical urge to vomit but also to move with the boat as it lurches
left, right and centre.

I am put in charge of the gutting the fish. Seamus picks up a very large knife, takes a sable and bumps it on the head, then decapitates, disembowels and throws the flesh down the chute. He
continues with the next fish: three bold moves with the knife and on to the next. The blow to the head of the first fish was just for TV; in reality the sablefish are decapitated before they can
blink, if they could. I take the knife and wield it dangerously as I try to remain upright. I steady myself and chop the deep-sea creature’s head off, gut it and throw the carcass down the
chute. The smell of rancid guts is pungent and inescapable. I continue with the next. Head off, guts out, down the chute. It’s a brutal, hellish scene of certain death, with potential death
all around us.

Head off, insides out, down the chute. Another and another. Seamus watches over me but I can take no more. I run to the side of the boat but quickly realise I can’t vomit over the edge as
it will blow back in my face. I puke on deck, all over my boots, a lurid yellow goop. But, unlike with a tummy bug or after an excess of piña coladas, I get no relief; I just feel even
worse. As the men heave another load onto the deck, so do I. Our work rate is in sync: every ten minutes another haul, another hurl.