Passport A small town boy meets the big wide world
One comment about swimming, or fishing, in Batanes. There were no rubber fins to kick behind you, but they did have a wooden fin! You wore one fin, shaped like a duck’s foot, and it was attached to your foot by rubber pieces cut from old tire innertubes. Rather than flutter kick, you frog kicked. Once you got the hang of it, you could move pretty well, but at first, it was pretty clumsy, and provided comic relief for the other guys.
Along with your wooden fin, you also had, if you needed them, wooden goggles. These were carved goggles, with safety glass cut out and fit into the eye holes and held there with sealing wax! They, too, were held on your head with rubber straps. Fortunately, I had a regular, round mask I had brought from home. I had to wash it every time I went fishing to keep the salt water from destroying the rubber.
Speaking of drying fish leads to another fishing method. At night during the season fishermen would go out in threes to catch flying fish. Flying fish were pretty good to eat, easily dried and stored, and were often used as bait for the long-line fishermen. One of the guys would sit in the bow, with a coleman lantern fitted with a reflector. The second guy would sit in the middle with a net, like one used in fishing in the US. The third guy, facing forward, would be rowing, or sculling. The flying fish were attracted to the light, and as they flew toward it, the net guy would grab them. Sometimes hundreds of fish per night, and dozens of boats. If you saw them from the shore, it looked like fireflies, moving from side to side as the fish came in bunches. After the long-line fishermen had secured their bait for the next day, the fish were “butterflied,” split down the middle, and hung on hooks on the washlines. In flying fish season, every house had drying fish on their roofs! I was never invited to go fishing with them because they said I was too heavy and the boat would then be too sluggish to turn with the fish!
A third way of fishing was with a homemade spear, called a “pana”. These were ingeniously crafted by taking a thin piece of rebar and filing it to a point. About two inches behind the point they would flatten, like a blacksmith, out an area, punch a hole through it, and insert a short nail, bending the nail somewhat so that it would not come out. This was to hold the fish once the spear went through the body. At the other end of the spear they would make a notch, slightly raised, that would be used to catch the elastic used to provide the force. Another notch was set just behind that one to provide the catch for the force straps. The “gun” itself was a piece of wood, about a 2 x 2, and about six-eight feet long. It had a lever attached to it at one end with rubber straps. At the other end was a long nail, bent in a U-shape, to make hold the rebar on line. Long rubber pieces were attached near one end of the gun, and at the end of each piece was a loop of fishing line attached, again, with rubber pieces. First the lever was set so that one end was in the back notch of the rebar. Then the force elastics were stretched back and the fishing line was put over the raised notch. Now the speargun was “cocked.” When you pushed down on the other end of the lever, the rubber shot the spear forward with pretty good force. Attached to the spear, and to the wooden “gun” part was a retrieval length of fishing line so that you could reel in the fish if you hit one or pull your spear back if you didn’t. Most people had more than one, of various length, depending on the size of fish you were hunting. And, you also had a short one, fitted with a flashlight, sealed in a bicycle innertube and sealing wax, for use at night.