Against All Hope

Last Friday about mid-day I received a text from Plain Wayne, the owner of Bella Maria, a 52 Viking convertible renowned in our little corner of the world for both fishing and catching, which ain't the same things, asking me if I wanted to go fishing on Saturday and advising me that the Freemanator would be welcome as well, which is always a sure fire draw for me.   For those of you have not met him before in these pages, Plain Wayne is Wayne Lewis, successful restauranteur, accomplished raconteur, and compulsivel fisherman with whom I have enjoyed a lot of good times afloat and ashore. But in The Fishing Reports, because he lacks an official title like Cap'n John or a cool nickname like Freemanator, he is henceforth just Plain Wayne.

I was in Tallahassee, so I needed to get a green light from the War Department, pick up Freeman from school, drive to Destin, choke down a cheese burger and fries chased by a slice of pecan pie at Jim 'N Nicks, go to bed sober, and rise early in order to be on the boat at the appointed time of 0515. Miss Mary did in fact give us the green light, as she always does, and we were off.

Bella Maria left the slip before sunrise.  On board were Plain Wayne, Cap'n John (Tate), Justin Goff, the Freemanator, and me. We headed for the Spur to look for a push on a good temperature break shown on the Roffs Report we had ordered. 

You need to know that Plain Wayne is a no kidding troller. He occasionally swordfishes at the end of a day of trolling, but only to kill time while he is waitng for the sun to come up so he can troll some more. And his bottom fishing is limited to a couple of days each year at the beginning of red snapper season to accomodate family and friends whose attention spans are only good for a few hours on the water. But Wayne's optimism and determination notwithstanding, trolling in December is not a high percentage play, so my hopes were low - maybe a nice tuna or a wahoo or two - and my expectations were even lower. 

We had the lines in the water at 0800, with the Freemanator and Cap'n John on the bridge watching the spread and Wayne, Justin, and I working the cockpit. The water temperature was 73 to 74, which is alright, but nothing to write home about.  Not too cold for billfish, but almost. The water was, however, blue and clean.

At 1035, the left short rigger line went down with a bang, and the drag on the reel began to howl.  A nice blue marlin weighing around 200 pounds leaped into the air far back in the spread, fell back with a splash, and then grey hounded from left to right, giving us a good look at him.  Then he got serious, and made a run for it. Wayne took the rod and went to the chair. He settled into the bucket seat, and hooked into the reel. The fish was still taking line. But by the time Cap'n John made it down from the tower, where he had been steering, to the bridge, and took the engines out of gear, the fish wasn't taking line.  He was gone.  The hook had pulled. From bite to bitterness took five minutes total, maybe less.

Undaunted, we quickly put the spread back in the water and soldiered on.  At 1105, there was a monster knockdown on the shotgun line. The strike was so violent that the center rigger was whipping up and down as the mystery fish pulled drag for a few seconds. But there was no hook up.  Based on the bite, it probably a yellow fin tuna, a big one. Damn, damn, damn.

And nothing else happended from then until we picked up in the afternoon and headed home.  Nothing.  All in all, it would have been a pretty disappointing day had we not caught that other marlin early in the morning.

I'm sorry. Did I forget mention the first of our two December marlins?

At around 0840, Plain Wayne relieved Cap'n John on the wheel so that Cap'n John could go see a man about a dog. Just as John stepped off the bridge ladder into the cockpit, heading for the head, there was a knockdown on the left short rigger where we were running a Black Bart 1656 Angle with a lumo skirt. Justin went to the rod and reeled the lure quickly toward the boat, stopped, waited a moment, and then dropped it back, trying to entice the  fish, if there was one, to eat.  But to no avail. No fish.

Oh, well. Justin pulls down the rigger line. Holding the clip in his left hand and the line in his right, he is just about to close the clip and run it up the rigger when the line is snatched from his hand. The rod bows and the drag begins to sing its siren song.  I instinctively glance at my watch. It's 0843.

"Fish on!  Fish on! Clear, clear, clear."

As I rush to clear the left flat line, out of the corner of my eye I see a fish far behind the boat go vertical, then tail walk.

"Billfish! Billfish!" Wayne shouts from the bridge.  I feel, more than see, Freemanator sliding down the bridge ladder like a little fireman, heading to the right cockpit to help clear.  "White! It's a white!" Who said that? Justin? John?

Justin grabs the rod and goes to the chair, where he proceeds to open a big time can of whup ass on this fish. Justin is big, strong, and young, up on top of the reel, cranking, cranking, cranking.

This fish is not so big and, seemingly, not that strong.  It's a white marlin, after all, not The Man In The Blue Suit. Almost before we have finsihed clearing, Justin has most of the line back on the reel.  Freeman is driving the chair and taking photos. John and I put on our gloves. I will leader the fish, and John will bill him and retrieve the hook and lure before releasing him.

The wind-on leader comes out of the water. I take it and walk the fish around the corner of the transom to the right side of the cockpit.

I see color, a lot of color. A big white. But still ten feet down. So, I lift him. Damn, he's heavy. A really big white. I pull him to the surface. No, not a white. It's a blue, about 150 pounds. A rat blue, but a blue nonetheless.

In the photo below you can see the fish, the lure on his bill.  For those of you have never seen an angry  billfish all lit up and ready to rumble, note the neon blue pectoral fin.

 Cap'n John grabs the fish by the bill, and removes the hook. Freeman is taking photos, the camera strap dangling across the lens, as you can see. The fish kicks with his tail, once, twice, gathering strength, snaking alongside the boat as it idles forward. "He's coming alive! He's coming alive!" John shouts to no one in particular, sounding for all the world like Henry Frankenstein when he first sees the monster move in the original 1931 movie. "Well, turn him lose then," Wayne calls down from the bridge.

And John does. With a flick of his tail, a somewhat confused and highly insulted young marlin disappears into the depths. It's 0900.

Two blues hooked, one lost and one caught.   On December 8. The Good Book says, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed." Well, I'm here to tell you that ol' Abraham ain't got nothing on Plain Wayne Lewis when it comes to hoping.