38. Crocodile Longtom

I’m never bored or disappointed visiting the pier because, for me, there is this strong feeling of being out and about in a very special place. For me, the opportunity of reconnecting, day after day, with others who are also coming to enjoy this magical location, is priceless. I love every minute of it. Sometimes it is quiet and uneventful but often something happens that warrants a closer look.

In the very first blog post that I wrote I told my readers about a Stonefish, which had been caught off the pier and in later stories about other memorable catches, such as the Pufferfish (9) and the Grinner (29). We’ve talked about Old Ben (18) and Bombay Duck (29), as well as Flatheads (32), Stingrays (12) and Pike (19). Blue Swimmers, mud crabs, sharks, tuna, bream, dolphins and many more creatures have been mentioned and we’ve even shown a picture of a shopping trolley (31) hauled up from the deep.

In my view, however, none of these stories are as strange as today’s post about the Crocodile Longtom (tylosurus crocodylus), which was caught a while ago by Logan. I had not seen one before and I asked Sam, who does not particularly like Longtoms, what he could tell me about them. He said that he’d only ever caught one himself and that he’d found that it had a bad stench to it.  However, he did think that they were good for bait and for crabbing. Logan, who had caught more than Sam, agreed with me that today’s catch was a scary looking fish and I would think that few would disagree. You only have to look at its head full of sharp teeth, shown in the photo above.

I’ve since learned that Crocodile Longtoms are also known as Houndfish,  Stout Longtoms, or simply as Longtoms. They’re plentiful in Australia’s northern waters and are present all around the tropical and sub-tropical coasts.  They can grow to 1.3m and feed on small fish, including prawns, which they eat whole. Interestingly, they have no stomach, something which is common to all forms of needlefish. This means that they have no acid to help them digest the fish which they swallow.  Instead, they use an enzyme which breaks protein down in the absence of acid. Perhaps this is why they smell? Some say, however, that, despite the way they look, they are good eating fish, either as fillets or cooked whole and deep fried.

Another interesting fact that I have read is that Longtoms swim close to the surface and that they can jump right out of the water to escape predators. Fishermen in the tropics have apparently been known to be injured by them when they have jumped into their boats. They’re an aggressive fish and, when disturbed, they’ve been reported to have attacked wading anglers. John, our fishing friend, was once bitten on the hand by one when he was trying to get a hook out. “They sway their heads and snap at you with their jaws”, was how he described it. Someone else described being bitten by a Longtom as being “very painful, like getting 20 needles all at once”.

As so often happens when I am writing, my mind focusses on the subject in hand for a while but then drifts off elsewhere and, as a consequence, the story changes direction. For example, the Longtoms got me thinking of the similarly large and elongated body of an eel which I helped catch in Port Kembla more than 60 years ago.  I had just arrived from Holland and my uncle had taken me out for a spot of rock fishing. We did manage to catch an eel, which was hiding between the rocks, by using pieces of strong fishing line with big steel hooks, to which we attached small pieces of meat. The eel we hooked was huge and very difficult to dislodge. I can still picture this clearly but I’m not sure whether my uncle, who was a great cook, did actually clean, prepare and cook it for us. Sadly, I have no memory of this.

As those of you who have visited Europe will know, smoked eel is an expensive delicacy in many countries there. The eel industry in Europe is huge. I seem to remember that seagoing ships carried them (alive) in tanks from Turkey and delivered them to Holland, where they were processed. I used to love the smoked eel which you could buy from the stalls in the village markets throughout the country.  

Back to the pier in Shorncliffe where our story began and where Logan caught a Crocodile Longtom. The point of this story is that you never know what to expect when you reach your destination on your early morning walk. What’s more, you never know where your mind will then travel to next. So, let’s keep walking and talking and enjoy where it’s taking us.

O.P.

P.S.  Anzac Day in Sandgate and my life as a raw recruit in the Dutch army are the subjects for  next Sunday’s post.