OLD WALL EYE

OLD WALL EYE, he was big and brown, he had a huge set of teeth and he terrified us. A dog? A bull? no a bloody great shark that’s what old wall eye was. He lived near Brunswick Heads N.S.W.; He lived in deep water and was notorious amongst the trawler men and the boaties. He wrecked so many prawn nets and ‘took’ so many fish, always distinguished by his one white eye, can’t remember which was the good eye, it may have been his starboard one.
He was a legend, he was not a figment of some bodies imagination. Ask any fisherman from up here and they will relate a story of this huge BRONZE WHALER. My mate John and myself can tell you first hand of our encounter with the toothy creature from the deep.
John owned a fiberglass bondwood boat, it was distinguished by the name ‘GOTCHA’. When the Bar Mouth was flat as a ‘night carters hat’, we would down tools and head out for few hours of fishing. Mostly we fish the local reef and if conditions allowed head for the 38’s. So here we are; anchored and down goes the 70lb lines with ‘pillies’ for bait, got some bites and landed some nice Schnapper, John suggests he has caught Australia, you fisher persons will relate to hooking the bottom. The only option is to keep hauling in until the hook lets go or the line breaks. For some time John hauls away but still the weight remains on the line. We both know something big has been hooked up, sharks mostly take a run and break you off, this was to be an exception. SO, what was this dead weight, it was not long before the question was answered.
Out of the murky deep an apparition of huge proportions becomes very evident, John has hauled to the surface “The Legend”, the, “walled eyed monster”. Two blokes with normally complacent personalities are incredulous at the size of this fish, GOTCHA is 18 feet long, the monster is nearly as long, it quietly surveys us, we survey it and a stand off is happening. The rest of the narrative will be a blur; a knife is produced, the line is cut, the motor started, the anchor is retrieved and we get to buggery out of there. WE have had our encounter with ‘OLD WALL EYE’ AND SURVIVED!This chronicle is mentioned else where on the WWW, more ‘at length’ narratives? (www.johnfarls.com), described as JOHN D. FARLEY, SUPERBLOG.