The fact that there have been no Fishing Reports this year is, for once, not due to my laziness. There was nothing to report. In May and early June, I made four offshore trips - three on Bella Maria and one on Blind Hog - and the total catch was one wahoo that was nothing to write home about, so I didn't write home about it. In the beginning, the water, although cobalt blue, was too cold, unseasonably so. There was no bait, so there were no fish. When the water temperature finally reached the mid-70s, there was some bait but still no fish to speak of. Some folks caught some wahoo, including a few studs, but not my kith and kin.
But that was then. A week ago this past Saturday the Hog headed for the Spur with its core crew of the usual suspects - yours truly, the Freemanator, and his father, Eric Songer. We were accompanied by an 11 year old friend of Freeman's who had never been out of sight of land, one Maurico Hyde. The water was still blue, but the bait was sparse, and we found nothing to fish on - no color breaks, no weed lines, no floating debris. Yet the action began almost immediately with open water bites. There were four good knockdowns by mystery fish during the first couple of hours, but no hookups.
Then the left long line, a skirted ballyhoo, goes off with a bang and a billfish goes vertical behind the boat. "White marlin! White marlin!" The Freemanator dives for the rod and goes to work. In short order, he brings the fish to the boat, and Eric gets his hand on the wind on leader but the fish is too green, so he dumps it. Before long, the fish is back at the boat, and Eric takes a wrap on the leader, officially completing the catch preparatory to releasing the fish. No need. As soon as Eric applies pressure on the leader, a nice sized and very angry white marlin goes postal right at the transom, and pulls the hook. Score one for the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Blind Hog, whose ranks Maurico Hyde has just joined.
An hour later, something smacks the long center line, a lure. The Freemanator, who is lolling on the helm deck half asleep, feels the bite before I hear the clip go and is up and on the rod like a jack in the box. "Fish on! Fish on!"
Another white, but this one is a tougher customer. The Freemanator is now fighting the eighth billfish of his career, but he is still only twelve, so Eric reaches around him from behind and snaps on a kidney harness, and hooks it to the reel. As he pulls his hands back, he inadvertantly knocks the drag into freespool.
"Bird's nest!" Eric yells. The line is backlashed into a knot impossible to sort out in the heat of battle. If the fish makes a run and comes tight against the knot, he will break off.
"I'm backing down," I shout to Freeman. "Reel! Reel!" And he does, gaining line as I back the boat, water surging into the cockpit through the scuppers, spray blowing in over the transom. But then the fish sounds, and I cannot back anymore without backing over the line.
"Freeman, it's all on you," I shout to him over the rumble of the engines. "You cannot let him get to the knot. If he keeps fighting down and starts taking line, tighten the drag, son. Don't give him anything. Stop him or pop him."
And Freeman does stop him. The line angle slowly increases as Freeman pumps and reels, and then the marlin is back on top, cavorting behind the boat. In a few more minutes, Eric has the leader, and the fish you see in the photo, not as large as the first, but feistier, is at the boat, angry and lit up neon blue. That's two billfish for the day. Anything that happens after this is gravy.
We almost added a ladle of gravy when we hooked up a 30 to 40 pound mahi, but he jumped himself off before we even had the teasers in the boat. And then the tantalizing possibility of a hat trick offers itself. I ask Eric to check the condition of the ballyhoo on the long right line. I turn my back to look ahead as he pops the line out of the clip and begins to reel the bait in.
"Fish on! Fish on!"
I wheel around, and Eric has a bowed rod in hand, with line peeling off the reel. There is an out of place rod sitting in the transom rod holder, but it does not register with me. Suddenly, Eric's rod straightens. Fish off. Eric drops back as I keep the boat in gear, and then reels furiously. The fish attacks again. I see him clearly. Another white. It misses the hook. Eric repeats the process. Now I notice the rod in the transom, but its meaning still doesn't sink in. The fish attacks a third time, misses the hook once more, gives up, and swims away.
Too late, I finally get it. While Eric was reeling in the ballyhoo, a natural bait that is the equivalent of a Hershey bar to a white marlin, the fish hit a large, plastic blue marlin lure running on the right short line. Eric stuck the rod with the ballyhoo on the line into the nearest rod holder, and grabbed the rod with the lure. That is when I turned around. White marlin are notoriously finicky eaters, and the size and texture of the artificial lure was not to his liking. But he clearly wanted to eat something, anything. All I had to do was step into the cockpit and drop that nice smelling, nice tasting ballyhoo back to him, and we would have had him. But I thought Eric had the rod with the ballyhoo. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. But a great day all the same.
Fired up by going two for three on whites, we were more ambitious this past weekend. Blind Hog departed on Friday afternoon for some overnight swordfishing and a day of trolling. Aboard were moi, the Freemanator, Tenser Mallette, who is one of my good luck charms, and Bobby Leger, an intense fishing fool who makes me look like a piscatorial dilettante. Bobby believes in live bait like a Southern Baptist believes in the Resurrection, so he arranged with Jughead, the bait man, for us to have a dozen or so medium size hard tails in the live well, just in case.
That night, we did nothing to deplete the stock of Xiphias Gladius in the Gulf of Mexico. We only had one bite, and no hook up. But - drum roll, please - the Freemanator saw a school of big hard tails swimming in the light around the boat and managed to catch a couple, including a hoss, that joined its brethren in the live well to await its appointment with destiny.
At dawn, we began troll, but soon came upon yellow fin tuna feeding in the water ahead. Tuna are big on eating an early breakfast, and we decided to serve hard tails on circle hooks. Almost immediately Tenser hooked up. On a big spinning rod, mind you, which made the fight much more interesting than it might have been otherwise. After some time, a lot of effort, and a fair amount of chaffing from the rest of us, Tenser had a nice 90 pound tuna boatside, from whence it went into the fish box without further ado.
As we were readying more hard tails for tuna, we saw a big blue marlin chasing his breakfast - the yellow fin tuna trying to eat their breakfast. Out comes the hoss hard tail. Bobby bridles it with a circle hook, drops it back, and puts it in the left long line clip. I begin to bump the boat around, slow trolling the live bait, trying to entice the marlin to eat. For an hour and a half we scour an area no bigger than a football field, seeing the marlin, still feeding, four more times. But nada.
As I lack a poker face, Bobby sees that I am ready to move on. He pops the line out of the clip. "I am going to drop this hard tail way back," he tells me. "If nothing happens in ten minutes, we'll go." The second he begins to drop the hard tail farther back, the marlin appears from nowhere, lunges at it and misses. Bobby puts the reel in freespool, his thumb on the line to prevent a backlash. The hard tail has seen the marlin as clearly as the marlin has seen it, and literally runs for its life. That provocative dash for survival seals its fate. In a whirlpool swirl of water the marlin inhales the hard tail. Bobby waits. And waits some more. Line is running off the reel. Swallow fish, swallow. Bobby pushes the drag lever forward. The line comes tight. The circle hook corkscrews into the corner of the marlin's mouth. And all hell breaks loose. It is 9:18 AM.
As you can see in the photo, Bobby is harnessed and focused, with Tenser just behind him to grab the harness and keep him in the boat if necessary.
It is common to back down on a big fish, but chasing one with the pointy end of the boat is something else altogether, at least in my limited experience. As I am spinning the boat with one engine in forward, the other in reverse, and my heart in my throat, Bobby is yelling, "Hurry! Hurry!"
After an eternity, I finally get the boat headed in the same direction as the fish, but at a slight angle, so that I do not run over the line. I push the throttles forward, and we're off. There is a big center console outboard boat dead ahead, also live baiting, that has to have seen our hook up and the resulting Chinese fire drill, but has made no move to give us room, as courtesy requires. I start blowing the horn. Freeman and Tenser are hanging out of both sides of the boat, waving their arms. I ain't turning, and I ain't slowing down. I won't hit the boat, which is crewed by five startled looking men and one wildly gesticulating woman, but I will plow through their baits if I must, chewing up lines and snapping rods. They pull away in time.
Bobby is now reeling. He is gaining line, and some of the color has returned to his face, so I conclude that the first crisis has passed. We are not going to be dumped. I slow the boat, and spin it once more to get the line behind the boat and the fight back within the usual parameters.
Bobby is now reeling. He is gaining line, and some of the color has returned to his face, so I conclude that the first crisis has passed. We are not going to be dumped. I slow the boat, and spin it once more to get the line behind the boat and the fight back within the usual parameters.
In half an hour the fish is coming to the boat. Tenser takes my place at the wheel, and I pull on the gloves to leader the fish, worried that it is too soon, that she is too green, that I might screw up and get my old ass snatched out of the cockpit. I needn't have worried. As soon as I touch the leader, she makes a long run, fighting down. Twice more she will come to the boat, and twice more she will take off, always fighting down. We never see her. Time slows to a crawl. Bobby, who is young and strong, is being tested. From time to time, we hold a bottle of water to his lips for him to drink, and then we pour the rest on his neck and shoulders to cool him off. The battle seesaws back and forth. She takes line, Bobby takes line. But we have an advantage. We have the boat. We back down when we can. We try to plane her up by pulling her down sea. We circle her to change the angle of the pressure. Anything to break the stalemate. Slowly, Bobby begins to gain on her.
At 11:38 AM, two hours and twenty minutes into the fight, I take a wrap on the leader and pull a really big girl to the boat. Bobby gets rid of the rod and bills her, so I can cut the line away from the hook, which will rust out. She weighs more than 400 pounds, maybe as much as 500. She is exhausted. We may have killed her. Tenser keeps the boat moving forward as we pull her along, passing water over her gills. Her mouth is opening, closing, opening, closing. Have we done enough to undo what we did to her? When Bobby turns her loose, she noses over and sinks away. I see her belly, a bad sign. But then she rolls upright, and, just before I lose sight of her in the depths, I see her kick her tail, once, twice, and then swim. The best possible ending.
Blue marlin more than twice the size of this fish have been caught in the Gulf, and tournament winners are almost always bigger, but this is the biggest fish I have ever seen in person, and a school boy and three regular guys with day jobs caught her on Blind Hog. Glory days.
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