I take it you've been reading 'The Old Man and the Sea'? Here's the correct quote: "I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. The noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet smell all over me." "Banging" is a common everyday word for a loud noise or violent movement of one object against another. For example, "Be careful! The ceiling is quite low. Don't bang your head!". It can be transitive, as in "Please don't bang the door! Shut it quietly" or intransitive, as in "The door keeps banging. Can you fix it please?". In your sentence, the 'banging' of the fish tail is the repeated movement and noise of the tail flapping against something such as the deck of a boat. 'Clubbing', if you look carefully at the sentence, does not refer to the tail at all. It is a person who is doing the clubbing. 'Club' means to attack or kill something by repeated blows using a blunt instrument. The speaker remembers another person clubbing the fish to death - the sound and the smell. It's a relatively unusual word.