Neelankarai is not an ordinary fishing hamlet. At first sight, it may not boast of anything special — tile-roofed houses teeter close to the shoreline; fibre boats and bunched-up nets are speckled on the sand; the kuppam boys are immersed in a loud game of cricket and thin-legged goats bounce on the narrow mud road that separates the beach from the settlement. Inside an enclosure on the sand, fisherman Desing and his friends prepare their gear for the next day. Their heavy nets are stowed away, now that summer is here. It’s time to go fishing by the reef and this calls for specialised equipment — the hook and line.
Neelankarai is home to fishermen who carry on the disappearing tradition of the fishing hook. “We use the thoondil mul from February to June to catch the vari para meen ,” says Chandrashekar, who’s stringing a hook. “That’s when the water is a clear blue. We alternate between the net and the hook as per the season. When the water is reddish, we reach for the net. The second hook-and-line season of the year starts in September,” he adds. Fishing hooks come in handy to catch fish that habitat reefs. Neelankarai prides itself with plenty of such underwater rock surfaces that are adjacent to the landscape.
“We cannot cast nets over these surfaces since they can be torn by sharp protrusions,” explains fisherman Solomon. Several decades ago, the forefathers of Neelankarai mastered the hook-and-line method to fish by the reefs and passed on the knowledge to their children. The traditional technique requires plenty of expertise. “Back then, they used coconut fronds and the branch of the konna maram to attract fish,” observes Chandrashekar. “The men dropped off a branch or two with a rock to weigh it down inside a reef. They returned the next day to find countless fish bustling about the leaves.”
The generations that followed improvised on the technique. “They used bait,” says Solomon. The bait, which was mostly chunks of smaller fish in the past, is now a glistening knot of nylon and zari fibres. Fishermen tie a small bunch of these fibres and a hook to a length of twine — a twine can consist of twenty or more such hook and zari arrangements. “Two of us will hold the ends of the twine and sway it gently underwater so that the fibres glisten to attract fish,” explains Chandrashekar.
The fishermen sometimes partition a small portion of their catch to use as bait for bigger fish such as vanjiram . A major advantage that the practice provides is ample rest to the fisherman. “It’s sufficient if we leave for sea at dawn with the hook-and-line. Whereas we’ll have to set out late at night and wait for several hours on the water if we use the net,” says Solomon.
Preparing a hook is a time-consuming process — the fisherman works with his head bent and eyes focussed, his hands knotting the hook and the fibres much like a flower-seller weaves jasmine. The entire set-up is pocket-friendly, when compared to nets that cost a few thousands. A packet of zari fibres is priced at Rs. 15 and a box of 100 small-sized hooks costs Rs. 30. The bigger hooks are more expensive and zari from Kanyakumari and Tuticorin is said to be of good quality.
In less than 20 minutes, Desing readies a line of 20 hooks. He holds it up to a passing gust of wind — the fibres glimmer as they catch the late afternoon sun. “All set,” he announces. “We leave at dawn tomorrow.”