Island of Ischia
Alduccio Esposito, a solitary fisherman, was one night engaged in fishing in open sea outside
Vivara and was slowly hauling in the“koffe” (long fishing lines with hundreds of hooks typical of the fishing methods used for fishing “merluzzi”), when he realized that something wasn’t right.
After trying again and again, he gave up and moved to another area much further away to retrieve the other koffe that he had put at sea the night before. Later, he then returned to the area known as “campanile a terra” the name given to recognise th efisching spot, and using a grappling hook, tryed to recover the koffe thata lied on the bottom of the sea, about three hundred meters deep, but he still encoutered great difficulties in pulling them aboard as the fishing method reguired was by pulling the koffe by hand, inch by inch, without the use of a motorised system.
After a few hours of exhausting attempts, with a brillian stratagem, he tied all the koffe lines to the boat and, using the engine power, dragged everything, hoping that whatever was stuck at the bottom would rise to surface.
In doing so, he gradually hauled in the koffe lines and reduced the distance caused by the weight. he water was very murky due tho the recent bad weather, and the fisherman had not realized that ther was a fish that had become stuck in the lines, because he couldn’t see it.
By then, the three hundred meters had become fifty, but still to many, so he pointed the bow towards the coast, heading towards Procida, where the water is shallower. There, once the weight rested on the seabed at fewer meters deep, it became easier to pull aboard the heavy load. But the surpise weren’t over: once on the surface, Alduccio saw that there was a fish, an enormous fish stuck in the fishing lines – so large that it was impossible for him to lift it onto the boat.
And so he had no choice but to slowly tow it, departing from outside Procida at four in the afteroon and
arriving in Ischia at seven in the evening. The enormous fish was a tuna weighing a full two hundred and fifty kilos. What a catch!
From the book:
Pescatori di un’isola del Sud -(Stories of many, so he pointed the bow toward the Fishermen from an Island of the South) – by Luciano Di Meglio – published in 2003.