Trapped in a cave with nothing but rotting bait and rusty water

Northland fisherman Cliff Barnes, 80, has fallen off his fishing boat and watched it chug off into the distance. Another time he survived in a cave for a week with nothing to eat but rotting octopus.

Barnes' story of growing up in the 50s and 60s in a struggling Kiwi household, and then making it his way in the wild west of fishing around New Zealand is told in a new book by retired journalist David Hastings - Hook, Line and Misadventure: Stories from legendary Kiwi fisherman Cliff Barnes.

Hastings heard about Barnes’ colourful life by chance, he told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

“I got an email in my inbox that said, ‘book thoughts’, and it was from an old journo mate of mine in Melbourne, who'd spent the afternoon in the pub in Daylesford [Victoria] with this amazing Kiwi fisherman, who he said had all these incredible yarns and scrapes with death.”

Barnes had been over in Daylesford visiting family and spinning yarns in a pub. When Hastings got in touch he was happy to get involved.

“The original reason for doing this, because I didn't know a lot about my grandparents, was to give something to my great-grandkids… I've got an 18-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 13-year-old," Barnes told RNZ.

He didn’t need much persuading to share a life of scrapes and adventure, Hastings says.

“I spent hours and hours listening to his stories.”

Surviving for days while a storm raged all around him in the Dome Cave (Rikiriko) at the Poor Knights Islands in Northland is one of many extraordinary tales in the book.

This happened before he had forged a career as a successful commercial fisherman, Barnes recalls.

“Up in the top league, I didn't become that until the early ‘80s. And for years and years, I had rubbishy boats.”

He was in just such a boat when he was caught in a storm. With little on board, he had to wait it out and use what he had.

“I sieved the rusty old water, it didn't have the acid stuff that you put in radiators today, it was just fresh water and just sieved it through my sock. I don't know how old the sock was, but I sieved it through my sock.

“And it was kind of drinkable, but in saying that, any bugs I got must have kept me going to this old age.”

There was no escape, Barnes says, once he took shelter.

“It was a huge easterly swell running, and you could hear the boom and there's like a crack in the back of the cave.

“I had poked my nose out a few times to try and think that I could go back across to Tutukaka, but it was just too bad. And I didn't have a ship under me, I had a heap of rubbish under me in boat terminology.”

There were no fish in the cave, so it there was nothing but a past-its-use by-date octopus for sustenance, he says.

The first day he “chundered” after eating the octopus, which had been intended as bait.

He had some rudimentary cooking kit on board - a pan with some mouldy fat.

“I scraped that off and I cooked up a piece of this thing and I managed, the second day or the third day, I managed to actually keep it down.

“It had gone from pink to bluey coloured and rotting, you know, because I had no ice or anything on board to keep anything.

“But anyhow, with the help of a spoon and the prayers of God, I got it down and it stayed down.”

Despite scrapes such as this, the life of a commercial fisherman beckoned, he says.

“It was like somebody holding a golden carrot in front of you.

“One day you'd go out there and you'd get enough fish to put in a lady's handbag. The next day you'd go out there and you'd get a boatload.”

By the late ‘80s fishing was a lucrative game, he says.

“We got these Japanese markets and that boomed the fishing industry.”

Barnes says he was fishing in the wild west days before the quota system came in, so there were plenty of fish around and prices were good.

“We were getting like, this is way back in the ‘80s, nine bucks a kilo for our fish.”

These new Japanese customers preferred a humane way of killing the fish called iki, he says.

“You poke them in the head, the Japanese said, you've got to iki the fish now and I said, ‘oh, I'm not doing that’ and they said, ‘well, we'll pay you another $1.50 kilo.’ I said, ‘I'll kiss them for that’.”

Although he's now retired from the commercial game, Barnes still goes out in his runabout most weeks, he says.

“Whether it was raining, blowing, or what I'd go fishing…I used to give the fish to a vacuum packer, I would vacuum pack it and give it to all my elderly people.

“They used to put ‘OP’ on the packs, and a lot of people asked me, what's this ‘OP’ for? I said, ‘the OP is for old people, anybody under 60 can get off their butt and go and get their own fish.”