Fugu

The small fishing town of Isumi on the Pacific coast of Chiba Prefecture is better known to sport fishermen by its older name, Ōhara. Like many provincial fishing communities in Japan, Ōhara is quiet during the day and almost deathly silent in the evening; it is just before dawn in the morning when the town is busy. In addition to the commercial fisherman preparing for or finishing another days hard work and the wholesalers loading their trucks with produce to transport to Tsukiji fish market, sport fishermen emerge, yawning, from their cars or the numerous minshuku guesthouses near the port and head toward their boats. Sport fishing boats in Ōhara generally set out between 5.00 and 5.30am and it is etiquette (and common sense really) to arrive at least one hour before departure, to register and pay all of ones fees at the reception, buy bait, ice or tackle as needed, sort out who is sitting where on the boat itself, get changed into waterproofs (and at this time of the year, thermal underwear) and of course, go to the toilet. When the boat sets out it is usually still dark, and as the lady of the house and her daughter see off the customers with a wave, the lights of the harbour gradually fade away and other than the lights on board, and of the other fishing boats also heading out to sea, it is dark. It is about twenty minutes from harbour to the main fishing point, and, after getting ones gear ready under the rising sun, it is time to start the serious business of Fugu fishing.

The sharp and strong teeth of the Fugu make it difficult to catch using conventional baited hooks. Therefore Japanese fishermen have developed a special type of tackle specifically for catching Fugu, called kattō. This is comprised of a round lead sinker, directly underneath which a large, 2 to 3 inch-long barbed hook is attached. A second line, between 12 and 20cm long, is attached at one end to the bottom of the lead sinker, and to the other, a large, barbless triple hook. The barbed hook is then generously baited with shelled clams – clam being one particular food that Fugu are fond of – the more the better. This technique is based on the way Fugu swim and feed: unlike pursuit predators who rely on a quick dash to grab their prey, Fugu swim slowly and in the manner of a helicopter or humming bird, tend to hover directly over their prey (generally immobile shellfish) and take mouthfuls at their leisure. The technique is outwardly fairly straightforward: after resting the baited kattō sinker on the seafloor, as soon as you feel a hit, sharply jerk the rod 30 or 40cm upwards. The sudden upward movement of the tackle whips the sinker up off the seafloor, and, if everything goes to plan, the sharp triple hooks below it into the belly of the Fugu feasting on your bait. Because of the ‘hovering’ nature of their feeding, a Fugu hit on a kattō bait can be rather subtle, sometimes even undetectable to the fisherman at the sea surface. Therefore a good technique is to consider any kind of unusual or suspicious movement of the bait, such as sticking to the seafloor or sudden slackness in the line, as a putative ‘hit’ and put in a quick upward action on the tackle to check out what is happening down below. Sometimes, when no fish seem to be taking the bait at all and one is slightly bored, or the tall waves rolling in from the Pacific Ocean kick the boat about a little and it becomes difficult keeping one’s kattō sinker on the seafloor, instead of trying to read the subtle fugu hits, putting in a rhythmical up-and-down action on the kattō bait, in 3 to 5 second intervals, can be a productive tactic and unexpectedly snag a Fugu or two when nobody else seems to be catching anything.

Regardless of how, once a Fugu is hooked on your kattō tackle the next task is to land the fish. Since the triple hooks are not barbed they can be easily thrown, so one must prevent this by keeping the line taut at all times, reeling in with a fast but steady motion, and without slowing up on reaching the surface, landing the fish on board in one smooth movement. Fish don’t like being hooked at the best of times, but when they are hooked somewhere other than their mouths such as their belly and are flipped upside down, they seem to multiply their efforts to escape and even small Fugu put up a quite terrific fight. Captured fish are kept alive in a bucket at one’s feet, into which fresh seawater is pumped. Fugu are generally hardy fish and since they are not hooked in the gills or internally, tend to be show little or no signs of expiring through the passing of a day’s fishing.