Fish coughs up golden watch

Spiel · June 6, 2009

Fish coughs up golden watch

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Using a dull bamboo stick, Curt Carish clubbed this 10-inch nenue that was swimming awkwardly Wednesday afternoon at Port Allen Beach. Moments later, the nenue coughed up a golden watch in Carish’s cooler.

Photos by Sheadon Ringor/The Garden Island

‘ELE‘ELE — With tennis shoes on, wallet in pocket and a bamboo stick in hand, Kaua‘i resident Curt Carish on Wednesday may have written himself into the most eccentric fisherman’s history book.

To catch a fish with such simple gear would be an interesting tale in itself. But after Carish hauled in a nenue, the 10-inch fish coughed up a gold watch.

“I was just sitting on a picnic table looking out into the ocean of Port Allen beach when I saw a nice-size fish awkwardly swimming close to shore,” Carish said. “So my friend Allen Hall gave me a bamboo stick and said, ‘Go get ‘em.’”

Carish jumped into the waist-high water and struck the nenue a few times with the dull stick until the fish went limp.

He said its stomach was abnormally large but he just threw the fish in the cooler along with his frozen chicken that he was going to barbecue that night.

Tanley, a good friend of Carish, opened the cooler minutes later to discover a gold watch laying inches from the nenue’s mouth.

“And the funniest thing is that the watch was on time and still ticking,” Carish said.

Carish, who often hangs out at the private Port Allen Club with many other members, said in all of his 30 years on Kaua‘i he has never encountered anything this bizarre.