w h i t e w a t e r • r i V e r • s e a • m u l t i s p o r t ... - Canoe & Kayak

Tales of kayak cray potting
by Herb Spannagl
In the short time I have been cray potting from my fishing
kayak I have had no shortage of incidents, some mildly
funny others downright annoying. It makes me wonder
if this has been just a bout of bad luck, a sign of personal
ineptness, perhaps even the dreaded onset of senility. I try
to banish debilitating thoughts with the counter argument,
the road to success and expertise is invariably paved with
incidents. Even that theory is debatable, judging from the
predominance of experts, including fishing greats, who
seemingly have never put a foot wrong.
My cray potting got off to a good start. I scored a couple of pots from my
neighbour, got a Kai-Koura test pot from its manufacturer, which incidentally
out-fished the Warehouse net pots 4:1. When bait in my net pots was ravished
by crabs, Chaddy, who runs the highly popular sight seeing trips to New
Plymouth’s Sugar Loaf Islands, showed me how to make nifty sniffer bait cages
from plastic garden netting that has totally eliminated this problem. Then
thanks to a friendly diver I was able to find more good cray habitat close to
my home. All in all I was doing so well that hardly a morning went by without
at least one crayfish coming up.
One of my most productive locations has been the port’s breakwater. Constructed
from great boulders and man-made concrete akmons its many cavities provide a
natural sanctuary for crays and other sea life that need shelter. My first incident
happened soon after I began potting at the Lee Breakwater.
An octopus attacked crayfish in my pot. In the confines of a kayak it is not easy
to free the tangle of firmly sucked on octopus arms, especially when some are
attached to one’s legs. One morning I pulled up a particularly big brute that
was trying to demolish a crayfish through the cage. It was so determined to
hold onto its prize that I only managed to get rid of it by a few direct hits with
the paddle. I removed the cray or rather what was left of it and then paddled
off to do some line fishing. My speed was slower than usual but I put that
down to a steady headwind.
Once I arrived at my fishing destination, I anchored, put my berley pot out and
settled down in the gently rocking swell to wait for my first bite. While I was
concentrating on fishing I felt something moving under my butt. Yes, there
it was again, the unmistakable feeling of a probing finger. Through my thin
pants I could feel every poke, every exploratory push. I sat bolt upright with
my mind racing in panic mode. Unable to jump up I had to slowly shift away
into a side-saddle position to get a look at the seat. That’s when I saw that the
“mystery” finger was the tip of an octopus arm exploring through one of the
scupper holes that drains the seating area. As I watched more arms appeared
through other scuppers and eventually some came over the side. Obviously
it was the same beast I had knocked off the cray pot. He had hitched a ride
on the bottom of my kayak. No wonder I had a slow paddle. Gory as it may
sound my only option was to amputate several arms before my determined
stowaway decided to abandoned ship.
My second incident was not funny at all. I had already discovered that the
closer I set my pots to the breakwater’s concrete akmons the better they
worked. Other people did too and soon there was a line of buoys all along
the breakwater. We all got consistent catches but as it turned out this was
not a free ride since one morning my buoys had simply vanished. At first I
thought my pots had been stolen, but after a bit of searching I spotted a blue
rope from one of my pots tangled in the akmons. Luckily the swell was low,
allowing me to get close enough to the gigantic concrete blocks to hook out
the rope with the paddle. It was dangerous work but with good timing I was
able to free the rope and the pot, which was also trapped among the concrete
forms. Not suspecting any thing untoward I refilled the bait cage and placed
the pot a good 25 metres from the wall. Despite more intensive searching I
could find no sign of my second pot.
When I arrived at the ramp early next morning I met a couple of very angry
mates who had just been out to clear their pots. They only found one of four,
which was like mine the day before also trapped among the boulders. It had
a grapple hook with its own line tangled in the pot line close to the buoy. This
evidence pointed to a night raid by thieves who had used a grapple to snare
the ropes of any pot close enough to reach from the breakwater. However,
when trying to pull them sideways most of the pots snagged before they could
pull them out. The swell did the rest, tangling the ropes and further jamming
the pots and buoys. That was obviously what had happened to my own pots
the previous day. As I had feared I again found my Kai-Koura pot jammed
solid and its rope hopelessly tangled. I tried all day at varying stages of the
tide to free the mess and finally succeeded with the help of a diver to salvage
the pot. As he cut it loose he found the other pot nearby and freed that one
too. I was lucky to have got away with only losing ropes and buoys to such
an unexpected threat. Until this incident I had only worried about sharks in
the sea not those on land.
That incident and the subsequent long spell of foul weather on our West
Coast disrupted my plans to collect a few more crays for a neighbour’s 60 th
birthday cum retirement party. With the date looming ever closer I decided
to try my home made snatch pot in the much calmer lee of the breakwater. I
tied an old rope to a Jenola bottle buoy and fixed an extra junk of railway steel
to the bottom of the net. The theory of snatch potting is that you paddle out
after dark, lower the baited net near a cray bearing structure and after say 20
min. quickly pull it up; hopefully laden with the crawlies. One dark night I
did just that and despite being declared insane by my better half I put most
of the theory into practice without any trouble at all, with the only snag that
someone had forgotten to tell the crays to play their part. I did two sets like an
old hand but somehow during the third a bit of twisted rope caught in the net
bag and before I could do anything about it the weighted net pulled the buoy
slowly under until it disappeared beyond the beam of my torch. It is hard
to describe my feelings at that moment. Probably surprise, anger, followed
by resignation and finally relief; because deep down I was never sure if this
snatch potting was really going to work. Needless to say I got no empathy
from the TV couch potatoes back home either.
Until these dampeners, cray potting had been a ray of sunshine in a spring
that has been unusually bleak, weather as well as fish wise. When we should
have filled up on gurnard we got spiny dogs and red cod instead. Sure we
had a few good snapper trips to Whitecliffs in North Taranaki but this Snappa
Mecca has since been gazetted as a no-take marine reserve. Yet another
marine reserve proposal, this time in the safest kayak fishing area next to New
Plymouth’s harbour, only requires the consent of the Minister of Fisheries
before that too becomes off limits. Taranaki kayak fishers are indeed facing
a pretty rough time at the moment.
ISSUE FORTYone • 2007 13