They were all there on the harbour pier at Kalk Bay in the late afternoon while the sun stood high above the mountains at the back of the bay.
Eddie, Abbat, Richard, Raymond, Desmond, “Ta Boy”, the youngest of us chokka (squid) catchers that would go down to Kalk Bay Harbour in the afternoons after school in the late autumn and winter.
You know the chokka were going to bite when you saw the “cigarette eater”. A man in his late fifties, small, grey-haired with a scowling face, he was a regular chokka fisherman. He kept a Texan plain cigarette in his mouth as he fished … and it would disappear quickly into his mouth when he squid started biting. Then he’d replace it with another. Continue reading “The squid also bite in the morning”
