Samson fish

At one point I mentioned to my Mom that over the last ten years or so a small number of charter boats have begun specializing in jigging for Samson fish on the west side of Rottnest Island. She asked if we could go. She didn’t need to ask twice, I had been waiting to try Sambos as they are called here for some time.

Samson fish are like a freakishly large and strong version of our amberjack. Beyond being larger overall than our amberjack, they are also deeper bodied than our fish which provides them even more strength when they pull sideways. Their name refers to their strength and stamina, which Australians apparently regard as Biblical. The technique is similar to jigging for rockfish on the bay except that everything is several times as big. The jigs are close to 10 inches long. The rods are similar to what you use for tuna. The fish average 40-50 lbs. The reels hold several hundred yards of 50lb braid. The adrenaline rushes when you hook one, and if you catch more than one or two you feel it in your arms and shoulders for days. One of my stouter coworkers told me caught two on a recent trip and then had to lay down in the cabin for the rest of the trip. Now I know why.

On the hour and a half boat ride out to the fishing grounds we got to know the rest of the people on the boat for the day. There was a British guy who had taken a break from driving one of the iconic black cabs in London to tour Australia with his 10 year old son. There were two couples from Victoria, one of whom had recently caught a black marlin out of Cairns but had come to WA to fish for Samson fish after hearing how strong they are. Two others in their party hadn’t done much fishing before and later had to be restrained by the captain to avoid being pulled overboard by their fish. There was a chain smoking miner from Calgoorlie who had clearly done it all before, and jigged so violently that he frothed the water with his line. There was another American who works as a sales rep for one of the major offshore sportfishing yacht companies out of Atlantic City NJ. There was an Aussie teenager who I later realized I had met before at the local tackle shop. He had one of nicest custom rods I’ve ever seen, which he had made himself. Then there were the captain and mate. Between long drags from their pungent hand rolled cigarettes they told stories of week long trips to exotic but fairly close locations like the unsettled portions of the Abrohlos archipelago, and boatside encounters with dangerous bronze whaler sharks.
I’ve caught Yellowfin tuna on 20 lb spinning gear before and that was fun, but Samson fishing is more exciting than any tuna fishing I’ve done. There are many reasons to love Sambo jigging. You have the rod in your hand when the fish strikes so you feel every head shake and tail stroke from start to finish. They are aggressive, often hitting several times before being hooked. One of my Mom’s fish struck so violently that it bent the jig, which is about ½ inch thick and has a steel pin running its length. The initial run is blistering. The Samson fish we caught were about 200 ft deep so the initial run often came very close to spooling the reels. That makes drag adjustment and line management critically important, and makes the fish that much more challenging to catch. Needless to say my Mom and I had a blast. Between the two of us she caught the biggest one, a 44 pound fish. Mine were slightly smaller at around 40 pounds. The biggest fish on the boat was over 70 pounds, but the captain said he’s seen many bigger than that and the record is over 110 pounds. It’s primarily a catch-and-release fishery, but one of the approximately 30 that we caught didn’t make it so we kept that one. It provided enough meat for everyone to take home a good portion, and our portion fed all four of us that night. I never thought of amberjack as being particularly good to eat, but grilled Samson fish is delicious.

Sadly I just recently found out that I may have gotten in on the tail end of the Sambo fishery’s heyday. This year the fish got scarce just after our trip. More worrisome is the fact that lately the sharks have learned that hooked or just-released Sambos are vulnerable, and they are taking increasing numbers of these fish. Many of these fish are large pre-spawn females and the Australian captains pride themselves on taking a conservationist approach toward the fishery. It is critically important to these skippers to minimize mortality in this fishery, but increased mortality from shark attacks has prompted some captains to curtail their fishing activities. I’m thankful for having gotten to experience it, and can only hope that the fleet’s good stewardship is rewarded with many more years of good fishing.

Photos:
1. My Mom with a nice fish.
2. The English kid with as much fish as he can handle.
3. Me with one of mine.
4. The >70 pound (32 kilo) fish; the biggest of the day.
5. The guy from New Jersey. The release apparatus is visible hanging off the left wall of the transom opening, level with the mate’s right hand.

The Holidays

Over the holidays my Mom, sister Erin, and Erin’s boyfriend Zach came down to visit me in Perth. After 5 months of not having seen anyone from home it was great to have them here. Their arrival on Christmas day was a fantastic Christmas present, and one that I had been looking forward to ever since I got here.

We spent the first few days just hanging around Perth. On the first day we checked out King’s Park which overlooks the Swan River and the CBD (Central Business District, it’s what Australians call downtown). King’s Park is Perth’s version of NY City’s Central Park. At over 400 acres, it’s by far the most significant green space within the city, and that’s saying something because you can hardly walk two blocks anywhere in Perth without hitting a park of some sort. It has monuments, open lawns, bushland, fountains, cafes, and elevated glass walkway through the treetops, and botanical gardens. Kings Park was a hit with the family and a quick way to get them adjusted to the climate considering it was about 115 ˚F the day we went and they had just come from winter back in the US. Must have felt like they stepped off the plane and into an oven to them but they came right after a while.

After hanging out in Perth for a few days it was time for an excursion to Rottnest Island. Rotto (as the locals call it) is located several miles off the coast and is completely owned by the government. Like most of Australia’s best real estate, and in fact all of Australia if you go back far enough, Rotto was once a prison. Now the government operates it as a park. The only full-time residents are a ranger, lighthouse keeper, and perhaps a couple of seasonal support staff as needed. Everyone else gets there by ferry, and no private automobiles are allowed so most people get around by bike. Picture a version of Smith Island with clear water, wallabies, and filled with Aussies in bikinis and swimming trunks and you’ve got a fair idea of what Rottnest is like. Rottnest also marks the southern terminus of the Leeuwin Current which brings warm water south, so it supports some of the southernmost corals in the world.

We rented bikes and snorkeling gear and set out to find some snorkeling sites on the west side of the island. After a few stops to snap photos of quokkas (dwarf wallabies that are peculiar to Rotto and a couple of other spots in WA) in the underbrush and views of a couple nearshore shipwrecks we got to our first snorkeling site. We waded in and started swimming toward Africa. The lumps of limestone on the bottom were half covered with macroalgae and coral. There was abundant fish life, consisting mostly of buff bream and various wrasses, parrotfish, and damselfish.

After another bike ride north along the west coast of the island we stopped at another beach. We surprised and ultimately displaced a nude sunbather from a spot next to some limestone cliffs. A brief snorkel was enough to conclude that this beach had nothing new to see, and then we were almost displaced in turn by a dugite (a deadly snake) slithering though the rocks overhead. Fortunately no one got bitten despite some other tourists chasing it and poking at it with sticks. This behavior prompted us to be on our way. We rode back to the main settlement and caught the ferry back to Fremantle after a bite to eat. About halfway through the trip the waves picked up and started to break on the bridge above the passenger cabin. The captain called passengers off the upper deck. The main cabin started to leak, and the projectile vomiting began from some of the less stalwart passengers. We arrived shortly afterward in Fremantle none the worse for wear, but keen to get out of the reeking cabin.

My Mom was keen to drive in a foreign country but we both thought that baby steps were in order, so before her debut in a full size automobile we rented a Scoot car, which is basically a plastic bubble mounted on a backwards trike with training wheels and a windshield. I can’t explain why but these things are street legal, and looked to be the perfect way to introduce my Mom to Aussie rules driving. My Mom drove like a champ, but the episode was not without its more entertaining moments. When we showed up the proprietor of the establishment told us to be careful with the car because it was made in France, which meant it was cute, shoddily constructed, and exceedingly difficult to acquire parts for. He also didn’t relish speaking to the French on the phone. He said a typical conversation with the parts distributor went something like this: Bonjour......G’day mate!.......Bonjour?........Hello, do you speak Strayin?……Silence……….Do you speak English?...........Click……..followed by a dial tone. He then called the French “cheese eating surrender monkeys” admonished us not to take turns at more than 20 km/hr lest the car tip or we fall out, and wished us “Bon Voyage” before disappearing into his office.

During the rest of their vacation we did more things than I have space to write about, and very likely more things than you care to read about. The highlights included going to remote beaches as we worked our way along the southwest coast toward Cape Leeuwin. The Southern and Indian Oceans meet here, and the whole area is in the middle of a travel corridor for white pointers (Great white sharks). Unfortunately at Gracetown Beach we came across a memorial to a surfer who was taken by one there in 2004. Incidentally, Scarborough beach is part of the same corridor and a white pointer ate another guy right in front of some café patrons having their morning lattes about 2 miles south of where I live a couple years back, but nobody really likes to talk about that and I haven’t seen any white pointers yet. We toured the Margaret River wine country which has WA’s premier vineyards. Zach, Erin, and I paddled into a surf break in Yallingup, but we decided that the risk wasn’t worth it when we learned that many locals wear helmets in case they get thrown into a limestone reef that’s about a foot under the water’s surface just in front of the best waves. We saw wild kangaroos. We got up close to wombats, wallabies, Tasmanian devils, potteroos, walleroos, brush tail possums, and other native wildlife at a local wildlife park. We played Supagolf, which is like regular golf but with bigger clubs and balls. It’s a more forgiving variety of the game with all the fun and challenge, but without the pretense, cost, and cursing that often accompanies the regular version. It’s apparently made it to the US but I had never heard of it. If you get a chance to try it, I recommend you do. We accepted rides from strangers and lived to tell the tale. We watched fireworks on New Year’s Eve over the Indian Ocean, and my Mom nearly shot the windows out of a beachside concession stand with a champagne cork. It actually went over building and clanged its way to its current resting place atop the corrugated roof. It was fantastic.

Photos:

1. Left to right: Zach, Erin, my Mom, and me at Kings Park

2. West side of Rotto

3. A quokka

4. Unidentified shipwreck, widely thought to be the Shark, a dredge that broke loose from its mooring in Fremantle in the 1930s and was never recovered (but no one knows for sure)

5. Coral off Rottnest

6. Chasing buff bream off Rottnest

7. Scoot car in Freo

8. Gracetown Beach, one of many perfect beaches with no one on them in SW Australia

9. My Mom gets close to a wild Western gray kangaroo