Thursday, November 02, 2006

I am a shark killer


I haven't posted in a donkey's age and I have so much to tell. Rather than try to catch up all in one shot, I'll spend the next several days going piecemeal through the latest events and happenings of my daily grind. This post is about the shark that I caught with my speargun.

I was out on the lookout for flathead and there was nothing around. The water was cold and I was paddling around looking and about to give up and was thinking of heading home to warm up. Nothing, I must have been on the wrong tide. All of a sudden I see a shadow scoot by so I begin to follow. I'm on the surface at about 2-3 metres depth with my speargun loaded on the first notch only since flatty is soft fleshed and anything more is wasted effort. I see this shape on the bottom and I'm thinking "that has to be the King of the flatheads" so I begin the hot pursuit. From the suface, I aim down to the supposed flathead and pull the trigger with the point of the spear probably about a metre from the fishes head. Instead of going right through and nailing it, the spearhead barely goes in and the "fish" turns on its side to shake out the barb. Wowwww, I think to myself, I'd better head down for a better look. Duck dive, straight down I go and what do I see? Shark gills. I'd actually pegged a Port Jackson shark. In my defence, from a few metres straight up, the outline of a Port Jackson is alot like a the outline of Flathead (other than the obvious difference in size - lets just write that off to suspended matter and distortion due to 3 metres of water). Well, the shark didn't seem too bothered by fact that I'd just sunk a barb about 2 cm into head and it just kept swimming along at the same speed. Well, I surfaced and kept kicking in an attempt to track while attempting to re-arm the speargun, this time at the second notch. Taking no chances and not liking the idea of a wounded beastie going out to die in the open sea with no one to eat it other than the other beasties (cuz I'm not a beastie, I'm a ... human), I drop back below the surface and level the spear head just above the shark's head. I did the whole "stop breathing part way, and gently squeeze the trigger" thing which I was taught back in my army days and released my projectile less than 10 cm from the targets head. Do I sound like some sort of crazed killer here? I hope not, cuz it's really about how I want to provide for my family and not abuse from nature and all that.

Anyways, I took the shark out and it measured just over 1 metre (it looks shorter in the picture because it's all curled up). So what do am I supposed to do with shark? Thanks to the wonderful knowledge imparted by the power of Google, I spend two days soaking the shark flesh which I'd preapared (also thanks to a link provided by Google) in ice water and lemon slices. After the two days, I dipped the flesh in olive oil then powdered it with a fish curry powder which I like then grilled it on the barbie. Does Yummy describe the sensation?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh My Gawd, a shark! Are you turning into a regular Crocodile Dundee? And more importantly, was it a fiesty one? Things to add to my to-do list... right next to experience high tea in Victoria.