The Fishing Reports: The Crossing

I cannot help but wonder if it is a coincidence that while hobnobbing with Pete and Melanie Mitchell at the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show Wayne and Maria succumbed to temptation, and decided the Bella Maria needed a face lift despite the fact that she is only five years old. This makeover, which will make her look like a new Viking 52 to all but the most discriminating Viking connoisseurs, includes a black mask painted on the eyebrow, mezzanine seating in the cockpit, and a teak and holly sole on the cockpit deck, and will cost not one shilling more than a King's ransom, I am sure. Now, I am not saying that Pete and Melanie are responsible for this sinful extravagance, but if they offer you an apple, do not take a bite.

The first step in the transformation of the Bella Maria from a not so old girl into an almost new vixen was moving her from Destin to the Viking South yard in Riviera Beach, where the renovation magicians reside. To this end, schedules were cleared, forecasts scrutinized, and opportunity awaited. A weather window opened sooner than expected this past weekend, and at 2300 Eastern time on Saturday, the 14th, the Bella Maria , crewed by Captain Wayne, First Mate Maria, and your lowly correspondent, slipped out of East Pass on a moonless night as black as a pirate's heart, bound for Ft. Myers, some 340 nautical miles away.

Wayne decided we would run 22 knots until dawn, at which time we would increase our speed to 30 knots, his theory being that hitting random flotsam or jetsam in the dark at 22 knots would make a smaller hole in the boat than hitting the same object at 30 knots. I thought this reasoning to be similar to pointing out that a 30 story fall is farther than one from 22 stories - undeniably accurate, but cold comfort in the event. Which is not to say I would have jogged along at 10 knots until daylight. On the contrary, I would have done an Admiral Farragaut - full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes, or the logs, or whatever.

Wayne stood the first watch, from 1100 until 0300, and your correspondent managed to stay awake from 0300 until 0700. Maria, who was not assigned a specific watch, made unscheduled, but timely and much appreciated, appearances throughout the night with food and coffee. The night passed uneventfully in perfect weather - a slight breeze out of the north and an insignificant following sea.

Dawn on Sunday was beautiful, but then, as you may have noticed, I am a sucker for sunrises at sea. I think it has something to do with the promise of the new day, a sense of anticipation, of possibility, that grows with the slow retreat of night before the advancing sun. Certainly, the extravagant displays of color that characterize even an average sunset shame the dawn, and there is a softness about the last hour of the day, and a languor about the first hour of the evening, that casts a peculiar spell over women, which means sunsets must be tolerated by men, along with the attendant handholding and sighs. But make no mistake about it: men prefer fecund, flame haired Aurora to the voluptuous decadence of the dying day.

On this particular morning, there was a low wall of gray-blue clouds to the east that almost touched the sea, running from the north to the south, where it joined a gray mountain of cumulus clouds that rose from the horizon. The molten sun poured through holes in the cloud mountain and from beneath the cloud wall, looking for all the world like lava rolling down the slopes of a volcano to set the sea ablaze.

We arrived at Boca Grande Pass at mid-day, and went inside to finish the first leg of our journey in the Intracoastal Waterway. At 0200, we were fueling at the Ft. Myers municipal marina, where we intended to overnight. A thousand gallons of diesel fuel later, at $2.77 a gallon, we were in our slip and drinking to a free Cuba. That night, we dined ashore in an Italian restaurant of sorts, where an unsuspecting maitre d' tutored Wayne on the economics of the restaurant business in the winter and Maria on the finer points of Italian cuisine while I smiled into my napkin.

We were away as soon as we could see to steer on Monday, heading west up the Caloosahatchee River toward the ditch and Lake Okeechobee. This dawn was very different from that of the morning before. The sun rose behind the smoking skeleton of of an industrial eyesore as scores, if not hundreds, of vultures roosted in the branches of nearby trees awaiting whatever grim bounty the light might reveal. Certainly not an invigorating sunrise at sea.

There are five locks and what seemed like five hundred bridges in the Okeechobee Waterway, which stretches across the state from Ft. Myers on the west coast to Stuart on the east coast. There are bridges that raise, bridges that turn, and bridges that just arch their backs to let you pass. The locks are smaller than you might think, but on this day we were the only boat in every lock through which we passed, three west of the Lake to raise you up and two west of the Lake to lower you down. Two feet, four feet and eight feet going up, and, at the St. Lucie Lock, the last lock going east, fourteen feet going down. The drop at St. Lucie was so dramatic because the lock at Port Mayaca on the east side of the Lake was not operational. It was, however, open, and a work barge was moored at each end, although on opposite sides of the lock. I have never been on a boat in a tighter squeeze. Without hesitation, although very slowly, Wayne expertly threaded the fiberglass hulled Bella Maria between a steel barge and a concrete wall with no more than three feet to spare on either side, if that. And he did it twice. I helped by covering my eyes with my hands and thinking positive thoughts.

By late afternoon, we had crossed shallow, coffee colored Lake Okeechobee, descended the St. Lucie Canal, and were tied up at Sailfish Marina in Stuart. We enjoyed another dinner ashore at a seafood restaurant with decent food, which was a good thing, as we had to walk a mile and a half or more to get there because no cabs were available, Stuart either being a busy little town on Monday nights or taxi cab challenged.

The next morning we completed the last leg of the trip to Riviera Beach in under an hour and a half, and I was in a cab on the way to the airport by 0900. On the long, Atlanta leg of my return flights to Destin, I found myself in a middle seat, rather than in my usual, preferred aisle seat, because I had booked late. It is a testament to how perfectly this crossing unfolded that when my seatmates, an older married couple, showed up, the man apologized and asked if I would mind sitting on the aisle so that he and his wife could sit together. May it always be so.

Bisbee Bulletin, No. 8: We Find El Dorado - Sorta

I would like to begin this final Bisbee Bulletin by writing that the early morning auspices for the last day of the tournament portended the capture of a big, money winning marlin. I would like to begin that way, but that was not how it was. I did not feel my customary irrational optimism as we boarded the boat, that sense of unlimited possibility with which I usually begin my fishing days.

This was the day on which the bill for Tropical Storm Rick came due. It was the replacement day for Wednesday when we did not fish, a shortened day with lines out of the water at 1400, a day that we otherwise would have whiled away in waterfront cantinas quaffing Coronas, margaritas, and varied rum presentations in anticipation of the awards banquet that had in fact been cancelled. I was emotionally flat, undoubtedly a breach of faith with my team mates at the very moment when faith above all was required from each of us if we were to prevail. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

That said, the shotgun start was every bit as exciting as the previous day, perhaps more so, because a sailboat probably completing the last leg of the 1200 mile trek south from San Diego, its arrival timed to coincide with first light, rounded Lands End just as the start gun went off. While it was impossible to see much through the haze of spray in the gaps between the racing boats, I imagined a retired couple living their dream, the husband at the helm, the missus below making coffee and toasting a bagel for her captain. He puts the wheel over to port and, as he makes his turn, sees the Drinking Dragon detach itself from the jumble of rock spires at Lands End, and thinks to himself that they have arrived. But what the hell? He just has time to yell below, "Jesus Christ, hold on, Martha!" before sixty internal combustion hounds from hell are upon them, hurling chest high wakes at them from every direction. The sailboat pitched and rolled and yawed as big sportsfishermen roared by within yards of it. It must have been a memorable and unexpected, welcome after a long journey.

Not having the luxury of time to pursue alternate strategies on this abbreviated day, we returned to the scene of our previous successes - the Jaime Bank. Having caught my fish, I retreated from the crowded cockpit to join Mary and Jeff on the bridge, from which vantage point I hoped to see Maria make good on her boast that she could catch a marlin on a 130 with one arm tied behind her back. George and Roy, both of whom had caught a fish during the first two days, also ceded this final opportunity to Wayne and Maria.

As we began the day in second place in the Catch and Release calcutta, I tried to monitor the tournament radio traffic. Tournament rules limited fishing to a forty mile radius from Cabo, and the permitted area was divided on the chart into lettered and numbered grid squares. Whenever a boat hooked up, it had to call in the hookup, the angler, the grid square, and the species. One member selected by the tournament officials from any crew apparently in the money would have to submit to a lie detector test before any money was paid out. In the Bisbee, this lie detector test is not a possibility as it is in most tournaments; it is a certainty because of the large amounts of money involved and past cheating.

Listening to the radio traffic was interesting, and it did nothing to lower my anxiety about us maintaining our place in the standings.

"Tournament Control. Tournament Control. Game On is hooked up."

"This is Tournament Control. Game On, your hookup time is 0932. That's 0932. I need an angler, grid, and species."

"Wait one. We're kinda busy."

"Tournament Control standing by."

"Tournament Control, this is Merlin. We are hooked up in B3. Bob Evers is the angler. Unknown species."

Tournment Control, Game On. We jumped off a small blue in G5. Tom Franklin was the angler."

"Roger, Game On. Lost a blue. Merlin, Tournament Control. Your hookup time is 0941, that is 0941, in B3 with Tom Franklin as the angler. Please advise on species when you can."

"Tournament Control, Merlin. It's a striper. No cigar on this one."

And so it went all morning as I took notes. Only three boats including us had a blue marlin release at the beginning of the day, but as the day wore on qualifying releases mounted. Three. Five. Six. But had any boat released two over the three day period, which would put them in first and move us into third? I did not know, because I could not remember the name of the boat that began the day in third place and that would move to first with another release.

Late in the morning Dolce Vita killed a blue marlin and headed in to weigh it. Not long after, Extraction killed a fish and reported that it was on the way to the scales as well.

At 1215, something ate a Black Bart 1656 Angle on the short left, and line whizzed off the reel, although it slowed quickly. Wayne took the rod and went to the chair. Our hopes soared, but only briefly, as Yogi said matter-of-factly, "Dorado."

"Maybe it's a small blue," Maria said.

"No. Beeg dorado."

And so it was, about a fifty pounder. It came to the boat pretty green given the 30 pounds of drag on the 130, and when Chris and Yogi both stuck it and swung it in the boat, the real fight began. The fish was thrashing and banging away with its tail and thick head. Gaffs flew here and there as the visitors from up north backed away to give Chris and Yogi room to work. Chris went at the dorado with the fish bat, but apparently wasn't packing enough ass to subdue him. Yogi snatched the bat from Chris and went to work, swinging from over his head, up on the balls of his feet. Ten, fifteen blows, no kidding, blood spattering the cockpit. Them Messican dorados, they tough.

As soon as the dorado was beaten into submission, we resumed trolling with time running out. The fish weighed by Dolce Vita had missed 300 pounds by a mile, coming in a 245, and the fish weighed by Extractor barely made it at 305. But as things stood with half an hour to fish, Extractor was sitting on $500,000. Here, fishy, fishy, fishy.

At 1335, we were near where I caught my marlin and not far from a Bertram 31 when it hooked up. We saw the angler struggle to get a bowed rod out of the rod holder, then stagger to the chair with the rod and start winding like a mad man. Between us and the Bertram, about 100 yards away from us and farther from the Bertram, a big blue marlin, 400 pounds at least, rose half way out of the water, shook her head, slung a tuna back in the general direction of the Bertram, and fell back in a great geyser of water and was gone.

The Bertram had hooked - or almost hooked - our fish from yesterday, the one we had returned to find. At least that is what I choose to believe. Our post-mortem was that the angler fished the tuna like a lure, locking up the drag immediately and reeling the natural bait right out of her mouth, rather than dropping back and letting her eat it. But it was no big deal, just a half million dollar mistake.

A minute or two before lines out, I saw Jeff out of the corner of my eye pick up the radio microphone and hold it to his mouth, just so no time would be lost in calling Tournament Control if we hooked up with only seconds to go. But we did not hook up. Tournament Control called lines out at 1400, Jeff put away the microphone and the 2009 Bisbee Black and Blue Marlin Tournament was over.

We did hang on to second place in Catch and Release. Wayne passed the lie detector test, and we pocketed $11,000, which, divided four ways after the Mexican tax of 11%, came to air fare and change. But I am now an officially decorated international angler, which distinction, if not priceless, is certainly worth something, at least to me.

Because of the second day calcutta rolling over to the third day, the boys on the Extractor won about $560,000 overall, while Mi Novia, technically the first place boat, won about $420,000. And that pot of money at the end of the Baja rainbow is what brings people back each year to try, try again.