ON HOOKING JEWYS
by
The Teller of Truths
Atrobucca adusta (Sasaki & Kailola), the Scorched Croaker
alias THE JEWFISH
This
exceedingly delectable table fish we call a ‘Jewy’ at Lae is one of many
species in the family of Jewfishes.
There are quite small species of true Jewfishes, only centimeters in
length, and there are quite large species such as the Mulloway of the south
& east coasts of
Here’s
one from the bottom at 450’ that has come off my hook
some 20 metres under the boat. It was
propelled to the surface quite quickly by ‘expanding air-bladder’ forces, and
is comatose, suffering serious ‘bends’ or a fishy equivalent of same. It is about to drift away on the river
current if we don’t drop the camera and snick a gaff into its’ mouth pretty
quickly. Most times their red-lined
stomach pouch will have extended out if the mouth like an elongated balloon and
their eyes will have popped out of the sockets, but not always if it’s had a
chance to eliminate some of the gas-bladder pressures naturally on the way
up. These gases will burst out and rise
to the surface, fizzing all around you some little time before you get the fish
up.
‘Jewfish’
is also a common local badge for many and varied species of fish as you move
around the world, so if you do a web search expect Google to come up with a
range of responses before you find ours.
DATA
Our
species, Atrobucca adusta, was described and named for science in 1988 by
Dr.Trish Kailola (Australian marine biologist,
I met
Trish Kailola at the old LYC Haus Wind one Tuesday evening when Darryl Goile
brought us together. She is a very pleasant and engaging lady. She confirmed that our Jewfish is indeed
"A.. adusta”, the Scorched Croaker.
I
subsequently engaged Dr. Sasaki in several interesting e-mails about our Jewys
and the tailless specimens that we caught.
He and Trish named it the ‘Scorched Croaker’ because it’s the only known
species of ‘Croakers’ (Jewfishes) that turns to a rich scorched chocolate/brown
colour shortly after death. And if you
still need to know what the ‘croaker’ tag is all about, do go out and catch
one. Better still, several. You can even
feel the resonance with your feet when a larger one happens to come croaking up
against the underside of the hull before you pull it out to the clear. Well, they fairly vibrated Salt Shaker’s hull
anyhow, on many an occasion. It’s always
a heart-lifting sensation, - “Will we get him hauled out and into the boat
without incident? Or will he be torn
away with the snap and thump of a whaler making a snatch?
Now,
just to add some scientific moments to this fish go to a web site among several
on the subject and you find this data
Family:
Sciaenidae
(Drums or croakers) No Fish Base pictures available.
Order:
Perciformes
(perch-likes) Class:
Actinopterygii (ray-finned fishes)
FishBase name: Scorched
croaker
Max. size: 46.0 cm SL (male/unsexed; Ref. 9772).
Environment: Demersal;
brackish; marine Climate: tropical
Importance:
Resilience: Medium, minimum population doubling time 1.4 - 4.4 years (low-fecundity Order)
Distribution:
Southwest Pacific: near
Morphology: Dorsal
spines (total): 11; Dorsal soft rays (total): 23-24; Anal spines : 2; Anal soft
rays : 7.
Dark or dull brown above, slightly paler below
(Ref. 9772).
Biology:
Inhabits shallow coastal waters (Ref. 9772).
Main Ref:
Sasaki, K. and P.J. Kailola. 1988. (Ref. 7483)
Sasaki and Kailola had access to only two of
these fish when making the original scientific description & assigning
nomenclature. The largest Jewys we’ve
weighed were between 6 and 7.5 kg = 85 cm to 95 cm in total length, well above
the size described by S & K.. Any
Jewy that we caught above 5.6 kg was likely to be a female heavy in roe.
Importance:
I wonder?
In the early part of 1991 heavy marine engines were heard by local
people to be working close
along
the shorelines between
Distribution: They seem to school seasonably in holes
and gutters in proximity to major river outflows. The deep hole off of the Gogol at Madang is a
notorious location. I spent one morning there with local identities, pulling
them out of a hole that bottomed at 700+ ft.
They hooked and came up as fast as four of us could work the lines (deck
winches), and few were less than 5 kg is weight. We mostly targeted them at
locations between the Markham & Buso Rivers at Lae. The Wongs and the Seetos among many at Lae
are more experienced Jewfishers than I.
The Nateras at Madang likewise.
Now here’s a pretty
good one, close to our max.
The
table at the end lists our outline catch data over a period of 18 1/2
years. Far the greater part was taken
onto Salt Shaker. Trips count only the mornings that Jewys were boated.
The mix
of very small fish, 250 to 500 gms that came into the weighings do distort the
average of some of the catch-weights. If
we deleted those small fish from the sums the pattern of hooking progressively
larger average fish consistently over the 1st twelve years suddenly
breaks off in 1996 when the pattern began to repeat itself over the next 7
years. Might this indicate a cyclic mass
spawning every ‘X’ number of years following which the same generation
diminished in numbers by natural attrition while growing older larger? If so, it may mean Jewys are a relatively
slow growing species? Certainly they
spawned every year, evidenced by occasional catches of quite small fish on
occasions, sometimes found in the bellies of whalers and hammerhead
sharks.
WHICH MONTHS ARE BEST FOR ‘JEWYING’?
Though
occasional catches of one or two fish could be made through the dry months it
is during the ‘wet’ that numbers congregate deep off the river mouths. Normally we began targeting them with intent
a fortnight or more after the first real river flushes of the season, late
April and May. Some years we’d have 2 or
3 weeks of hot action beginning say early May, and then they’d be gone for a
while, however any time up to late September seems to be prime time. Hilmar Wong always maintained that August is THE
month. My recordings never showed August
a standout month, but it’s certainly in the later part of the prime months.
Many years our August catch was zero, usually because Busu was in spate, and
that turns the bite off. Some years even late November still offered a run,
however by December they just seem to have gone.
WHAT’S THE BEST TIME OF DAY TO LOWER BAITS?
When I
collated our catches to the moon phases I found no real pattern relating
bite-periods and bite-days to moon phases. I don’t say there isn’t, however
when you miss 6 to 13 days between trips, fishing different tides each weekend,
patterns don’t emerge readily.
I also
took special note of the Maori Prediction tables and other ‘Bite Time’
prediction charts for some years (major bite and minor bite periods, sun-up,
sun-down, moon-rise). I never got the
impression that there were more than coincidental connections. It’s more likely
that fish availability related to food cycles (prey species), and some of these
could be moon-related. However on an
uncanny number of occasions in the ‘80’s Mike Zimmerman would pull up next to
us at 10 am and announce that “The Jewys will kick in any time now”, and he’d
anchor up and the statement would be proved.
Either we’d both begin hooking them within a short while, or I had
already begun lifting fish in the past minutes.
So – mid-morning!?!
One of my Seeto connections used to say “We start
fishing shallow and follow them deeper as the morning progresses if you want to
stay in touch with them.” And that
proved so useful that it became my general protocol. I do not discount the
logical theorem that these, like many by the
river have settled down and a fresh invasion of small marine life has
re-established a new food chain after the disruption of floods.
Here’s a pic of PC, caught at one of his niche skills – lassoing Jewys. Skillful, isn’t he! Note the inverted stomach. Paul Carroll
wagers that when the winds and currents bring the blue water right in close to
the coast it brings the Jewys on. My
best experiences occurred a while after major spates at Busu Rvr. That’s after
nutrients washed to the sea by the river have settled down and a fresh invasion
of small marine life has re-established a new food chain after the disruption
of floods.
WHERE DO THEY HANG OUT DURING THE ‘DRY’?
It’s
all conjecture, though I have my theory on that, based on a single years’
experience. Soon after I began riding
shotgun on the ‘Jewfish patrol’ I had discussed this with an exat who’d made
concerted efforts to find the ‘summer’ fish.
He had pulled baits down with lead-filled pieces of water pipe to 1,000+
ft and more onto ridges and slopes and into gutters. He had ranged to various environments around
the bay, to reefs, beside reefs, between reefs, so forth, without any success
at all.
During
Dec.’88 and January’89 we found them schooled up at the south edge of the deep,
wide channel cut into the bottom of
Two trips
later we found them (or another mob) settled down at the bottom edge of a
similar jump-down some 500 away towards Singaua. Two hot weekend sessions there, and never
again did we find more than the odd fish during the dry months. Hmmm.
So thereafter good catches of Jewys remained a seasonal thing.
SO EXACTLY WHERE DO YOU FIND THEM?
Well,
the last par has opened the account. Always fairly deep off the river
mouths. We had our prime experiences at
Busu and Bupu rivers. We caught them at
Buso and the Markham, but never many there. I believe that there are hollows
off the
When we
began Jewying (1983/84) the Busu Rivers’ main channel directed southeasterly
from the southern side of the delta flats and that’s where the best fishing was
had. During the ‘90’s various major
floods filled the channels of that side and the main flows ejected from centre
and north. By the late ‘90’s the major
water directed northeasterly from the middle and north side of the flats. Get your baits under or close to the edge of
these main river current lines, and explore.
MODUS OPERANDI
The
Bait.
(Left Pretty crew, pretty fish?
Well, it helps the day along.)
You only
need remember four words, represented by FLOF.
Fresh, Local, Oily, Fish. When Fresh is not available, Oily Fish is
almost equally as good for drawing strikes from Jewys. So, the oiliest tunas are prime, Skippies are
best of that lot. The bait-fishes Lala
and Malembo (Jabim names) that you can buy from the Labu people, or from Wong
Tim when there’s plenty around are just great, especially when fresh. And Kindams (fresh water shrimps) really
tickle their fancy. Daru prawns were
good when they used to be available Remember a pound of prawns can turn up 50
lbs of prime Jewfish, you choice. I’ve
found that old, heavily brined tuna chunks are on a par with fresh squid. They catch fish, but don’t hold a candle to
above.
The
Rig.
Some
people use short boat-rods with a large reel packed with 15 or 24 kg mono. Where Jewys are generally fished from 700 ft
depth at the Gogol (Madang) some boats use heavy boat reels clamped to the
gun’ls and much of the main line is gelspun or equivalent to eliminate a lot of
the stretch. I find hand lines more responsive, more comfortable, and faster to
work that rods and lighter line, providing you learn to lay and control 400 or
500 ft of it on the deck and let it out again without tangles. It’s a bit of a learning process for
beginners. My boat used 45kg mono on
large reels. A few metres of 36 kg at
the end was de riguer, allowing easier breakaway on the occasional time it’s
needed.
If you
don’t want sharks, and are prepared to do some re-rigging on the run then
eliminate the wires I used at the bottom.
Just tie up a paternoster rig.
Hilmar does it with a 3/4 lb sinker at the bottom and two dropper loops
formed by tying them in the main line.
You may need 24 kg down there for that. I used this rig for reds but
utilized coated strand-wire and swivels when jewying because I liked to play
with the big pike-eels, sharks and anything else that could pull my boat
around. I collected a lovely 14.5 kg
mackerel just above the bottom at 360’ one morning, a pleasant surprise indeed.
I’d have never known what the bits was from had I not been wired. They DO hunt
at 100+ m.
The Jewy
has an extraordinarily large mouth = a
Big bite, so our droppers were around 15 to 20 cms long and rigged to present
one bait within 10 cms of the bottom and the other say 20 to 30 cms above that.
You will take 80% of your fish on the lower hook most days = the fish are
probably hunting prawns and such right on the bottom. The very bottom is ground zero.
My choice
in steel was 6/0’s, fairly heavy gge, something you can pull against. And these
look mighty tiny in the average Jewys jawline. I captured tiger sharks, rays,
and whalers all sizes to way over 100 kg on those hooks, but time and much
finesse is required. We would use 5/0s
if there were Red Emperor in the mix, which sometimes happens, and we’d do as
well on both species. You could use a
10/0 no problem, but what real advantage?
Jewys have
a soft mouth, soft flesh and soft bones.
Hooks can tear big holes around Jewy jaw lines and hooks can fall out
easily if the pressure comes off. If the
hook tears out within 20 m of the top the fish will float up anyhow.
I found
that 45 kg mono was pretty comfortable to handle when fishing was brisk, and
the bites of all species were quite detectable in deep water on this heavy mono
compared to light stuff. When the fish
has been hooked, speed of retrieve definitely counts on several fronts. Not the least being that the longer it takes
you to get a charging Jewy under control and out of the water the greater the
chances are of it being sharked.
The faster you get it coming up, the sooner it’ll suffer the
fishy equivalent of the bends, the sooner it’s gas-bladder will blow and the
greater your chance is of getting it aboard.
Well, fish north of 6 kg are always going to slow things down, but speed
does count.
Here’s a
pic of one that our son Bruce did not keep in control long enough to preserve
in good shape. It’s helpful if you can
be philosophical about these incidents –“Man – You lost the shark as
well???!!!”
Bearing in
mind that it’ll take you four minutes to get feed to the bottom, perhaps a
minute or two to hook up if the fish are ON, eight to get control and swing it
in board, and another to bait up and re-commence the cycle, that’s the best
part of 15 minutes per cycle = 4 fish/hour. After breakaways and shark-bite
three fish per hour per angler is quite good going while the bite is on. But other factors bear in. If the Jewys are in numbers, then whalers
will also be on the Jewfish Patrol with you, and sometimes you have to haul one
of those hard-lugging critters up through 400’ before you can cut him away with
some of the line, meanwhile all other lines have been brought in and can’t
catch fish. So that puts a 15 to 30 minute
dent into everyone’s productive time while the bite lasts. All good things come to an end, and raging Jewy
bites are no exception.
A
Small But Very Effective Tip.
You don’t need the tedium of pulling
450’ of tackle up and down too often just because some critter got the bait off
on the first bite. It’ll weary you. We bind a metre of sewing cotton around the
baited hook and nothing ever got those baits without a serious chance of
getting hooked. Simply wrap the standing
end of the thread around the hook shank 4 or 5 times, then swing the cotton
around and aåround this way and that over your baited hook forming a crude net.
Finish with 3 or 4 turns of the tag end around the shank again and Bob’s your
Aunty. No knots. And this is especially useful if you get among picky Reds.
Anchoring Up.
When you
talk ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ about Jewys here at Lae, like all things, it’s
relative. 300 ft is quite shallow, 400’ to 450’ prime, and 520+’ is
deepish. And it’s the big, often
pregnant mothers that is likely to be the catch out at 500’ or so.
One poor
season I complained to Hilmar “Where are the flammin’ Jewys this year?” His reply “Get out deep, 550’, you’re likely
to only get one or two, but they’ll be big, you’ll only need one or two.” And so it happened.
Here’s one of them
muthas. As usual, the eyes have popped.
Without
echo sounder, I relied on onshore coordinates and my nose for Jewys when
deciding where to pick in and begin. First choice would be in
vicinity of our best results the previous week, and that was likely to be under
or close to one of the main river currents.
Next I would ‘look’ for any sort of drop-off along the bottom, the
steeper the better. My anchor rope was
marked off at 50’ intervals, and moving back and forth with rope and lines soon
taught us the lay of the real estate down there. After some time I encoded a fairly reliable
rule of thumb that says “Reds at the top of the drop-off and Jewys tight along
the bottom.” Reds are, of course, our
so-called Red Emperor, a la our delectable Scarlet Sea Perch.
Exploring For The Fish.
I would
anchor up close in over about 300’ depth.
450’ of rope normally did than well for my light dinghy. We pay out
enough rope to ‘hold’, and begin. If we
hadn’t made ‘contact’ inside 10 or 15 minutes I’d begin paying out rope a few metres
a time every 5 to 10 minutes, bouncing our shrapnel along the bottom as we
went. If there was no success we’d finish up with all 1250’ (380m) of rope out and above about 530’ depth
of water on the average, depending of course where we were in relation to the
bottom profile. By now an hour had
elapsed. And most likely the swing of
the breeze and currents will have taken us sideways some distance so we’d begin
reversing the process, exploring a new track along the bottom with the baits as
we worked back into the shallows.
When
that did not succeed we found it more productive to commit a half hour to
weighing anchor and setting up afresh nearby, or to burn more time and move on
to another river, than to just hang around patiently waiting for the fish to
come to us. Of course other species of
fish often drew our attention and interrupted any dedicated search for the
Jew. As delectable as they are, I’m like
a mackerel (an opportunist) and I learned some versatility even before Mr.
Cross came along and began influencing my way of thinking about fishing.
Salt
Shaker was so small it was the easiest thing to run the rope inboard past the
bow bollard, down centre of the boat and under my foot. I never needed to take my back off of the
raised motor cowling (my back-rest) to work the rope and explore in this way.
When the fish were found and the sign “Men at Work” was erected the rope would
be retained by a rowlock pin.
Hooking
Technique.
Since our Jewys generally feed right at
the bottom you need to keep your sinker on or lifting and touching it as you
wait. Movement of the bait is very often helpful. Unlike Mulloway, our fish are
not very wary about heavy lines and big tackle.
I’ve seen big circle hooks almost as thick as a pencil that you could
never put a standard prawn on used at the Gogol (i.e. 200 gms of metal + 4 gms
of bait) and the Jewys never questioned the propriety, it was just Bang Wallop
Bang” I’ll Have That, Mate!” and they’re on.
The bite of a small fish (under say 3
kg) normally presents as some fiddling, perhaps 2 or 3 lazy tugs. Acceptance by most fish over 4 kg will, 7
times in 10, register as a total slackening of your line. They pick up the bait and rise 3, 4 or 5
metres off the bottom to deal with it.
One presumes they lift it up out of the competitive zone at the bottom
where others may compete for it. It may
try to mouth the bait away from your line and sinker, or it may drop it again
right away due to the swinging sinker weight.
So when your line goes totally slack you need to whip up line just
as fast as you can, and most times you’ll suddenly come up good and tight. If you are getting Jewfish then most times
it’s another of them. However 9 of 10
whalers and 6 of 10 pike eels will do the same thing. It may take 2 or 3 minutes of lugging to
determine what you’re dealing with. Most
species will run hard this way and that after realization.
HIGHLIGHTS
Well -
what can I say - getting a Jewy aboard at any time is a highlight, getting it
to the plate even more so. Sweetest of
all cuts are ones rarely taken by Expats at Lae, and this probably applies to
most bottom fish. They are in order 1)-
the drop-dead succulent meats that control the dorsal fin. After taking your fillets off the carcass
this section will peel off the frame in one long strip. The average fish is large enough for this to
be well worth the small effort required to fork out or suck off the cooked
meats. 2)- The tail end of each fillet,
3)- the briskets. It’s the old adage
“The closer to the bone the sweeter the meat”.
On rare
occasions we began hooking fish the moment our shrapnel touched down and never
stopped until it would have been totally gross to continue. To voluntarily walk away from a raging bite
is sometimes a hard but a moral thing to do. June/July 1999 was a
standout. We two stopped at 36 fish by
late one morning. 93 kg of them filled
two copra bags and a large esky. Fed a
lot of people on the compound that time.
Following Saturday morning we quit at 30. Next Sat morning we reckoned 24 was heaps,
and we left them biting across a front perhaps 300 metres wide in front of the
Busu. Thereafter ten to a doz was best
we could muster up a trip until we lost contact with them in the following
month.
Normally
a defect in a fish’s physiology is a signed death sentence, sooner or very
little later. Even a minor fault or
incapacitation creates bad survival odds.
On occasions we came up with viable fish that had half the tail fan
missing, or a large chunk long since gone from the dorsal area and healed
over. One had lost an eye. Presumably it
survived by staying in proximity of many friendly eyes, an aggregation of
wantoks.
Here’s one of three totally tailless Jewys we boated among those
three feisty catches discussed above.
The tails and peduncle were missing right up to the trailing end of the
dorsal fin. At first I wondered whether
there may have been a genetic problem, however on inspection it appeared more
like the tails had been carved away at some stage in their past and the stump
re-grown with scale coverage because there were thin scar-lines present.
It
would have been interesting to see how they moved about, catching kai at the
bottom. They were under the average size
of fish we had been boating, however were well fed and prime, albeit unhappy
about being onboard. These three fish
were 4.2% of our total catch over those days.
Could this be an average proportion in very large schools of fish where
many eyes and noses benefit the whole aggregation? Methinks probably not.
Dr. Sasaki wrote that several species of fishes have been recorded
in this condition – unusual, uncommon, but on record.
In this
2nd photo the two fish, left and right at bottom had no tail between
them.
In his
fascinating book “FISH TALES” (Random House Australia) Julian Pepperell
includes some discussion on our three short fish, with pics, and offers some
interesting insights on this and other species that have survived quite serious
injuries.
Well,
Uncle Lester’s coming back to port now.
Time to retrieve and tow back home.
I hope there are parts of this discourse that might help you to go and
experience “That Jewfish feeling!”
Cheers
Lester
Rohrlach (sadly gone finish)
Year
|
Catch trips
|
No. of Jewys
|
Wt of Jewys
|
Average fish kg
|
Heaviest fish - kg
|
|
1984 |
10 |
62 |
91.2 |
1.47 |
4.09 |
|
1985 |
15 |
80 |
158.0 |
2.00 |
6.14 |
|
1986 |
21 |
121 |
151.7 |
1.26 |
5.00 |
|
1987 |
12 |
69 |
106.1 |
1.91 |
5.57 |
|
1988 |
17 |
152 |
320.7 |
2.11 |
6.02 |
|
1989 |
19 |
79 |
185.4 |
2.35 |
5.45 |
|
1990 |
19 |
104 |
303.0 |
2.92 |
5.80 |
|
1991 |
13 |
25 |
100.8 |
4.00 |
6.70 |
|
1992 |
11 |
27 |
95.2 |
3.53 |
6.14 |
|
1993 |
6 |
8 |
33.0 |
3.07 |
6.59 |
|
1994 |
6 |
8 |
24.4 |
3.05 |
6.36 |
|
1995 |
3 |
3 |
14.9 |
4.96 |
6.93 |
|
1996 |
3 |
12 |
22.7 |
1.89 |
7.5 |
|
1997 |
4 |
8 |
11.1 |
1.39 |
5.23 |
|
1998 |
5 |
24 |
47.6 |
1.90 |
3.98 |
|
1999 |
12 |
191 |
542.4 |
2.84 |
4.77 |
|
2000 |
17 |
51 |
236.9 |
2.79 |
6.82 |
|
2001 |
12 |
42 |
134 |
3.20 |
6.82 |
|
1/2 of 2002 |
3 |
5 |
20.0 |
4.00 |
5.23 |
|
Some totals |
|
1,071 fish |
2,559 kgs |
|
6.93 the best |