My Fish Pond.
The piscatorial residence—forty-six feet long, twenty-three feet wide, and five and a half feet deep—being ready for occupation, the next question to determine, was how to keep the fish alive after they were caught, until they could be transferred to the pond. To accomplish this, I made a sort of basket of wire-netting to hang over the side of the boat and keep the fish in, but it proved a failure, and I eventually purchased a little punt about six feet long, which had been built for a boy, but was too cranky to be used with any degree of safety. In this punt, fitted with a removable canvas cover, and filled with water, the captured fish were deposited, towed home, and transferred to the pond, where they soon appeared to be perfectly at home.
About this time I obtained the services of an able-bodied lad of some seventeen years, who understood farm work and a little carpentering. He used to fish for me at times, and caught so many fish that I tried sending fresh fish down to Auckland for sale there. The journey occupied, however, the greater part of two days, though the distance is under a hundred miles, and the fish did not arrive in town in good condition. If packed in ice, they would of course have kept perfectly fresh, as they were alive when sent from Matakohe; but I had no ice-making machine, and therefore was obliged to give the matter up.
I feel confident, however, that the fishery here only wants capital to develop it, to become one of the great industries of the North Kaipara. Its land-locked waters swarm with the finny tribe, and can be fished with impunity in any weather. Fish is by no means a cheap commodity in Auckland; but the population being small, the market there would soon be glutted. Sydney, Melbourne, and the other Australian ports, however, present a grand field for the disposal of the fisherman's spoils, and were fish sent away alive from here packed in ice, frozen by the Freezing Company in Auckland, and transported from there to Australia in ships provided with freezing chambers, I cannot help believing an immense trade would be done.
Sketch of Schnapper.
Skull of Schnapper.
I have seen in the newspaper the price of fish called schnapper, quoted in the Sydney market at from thirty-six shillings to eighty-four shillings per dozen. These fish can be caught line-fishing in the Kaipara, at the rate of sixty or seventy an hour per line of two hooks, and of an average weight of about 9 lbs. each. The schnapper fisherman files the barbs off his hooks, that they may readily be extracted from the fishes' mouths; he also ties the bait securely on; and thus prepared, can haul the fish in as fast as he likes. The schnapper has most powerful teeth and jaws, and lives principally on cockles and mussels, the shells of which it crushes in its mouth without difficulty. It will, however, take almost any sort of bait, and is by no means a fastidious eater. The Kaipara waters swarm also with several other varieties of fish.
