The Last Marlin

by Waitzkin, Fred;

  Out of sight of land I was no longer monitoring my physical being for twitches, wheezes and aches, all the subtle water signs of breaking down and bowing out. Thankfully this channel in my head had shut down. I took deep breaths of sea air. We were in a tiny boat and there was no land anywhere. The seas had gradually built into rolling mountains of calm ocean and the staunch little boat rode steadily up and down. Perhaps a little seasick, Bonnie nestled alongside me as I steered. This must be the hump. This was where I wanted to be for my life.

  After four hours there was still no Bimini ahead, which was perplexing. Maybe with our heavy load of luggage, bait and groceries, we were traveling more slowly than I had imagined. Having crossed to the island many times, I had the impression that Bimini must be dead ahead, as it always had been, like a vast coastline instead of a tiny strip of sand and a few palm trees. But in all of these earlier trips Dad had done the navigating.

  Soon it dawned upon us that we were lost at sea. I felt heady more than nervous. I was sure we’d find Bimini and welcomed the challenge, although Bonnie’s mood was less sanguine. After a few miles more I spotted two barren rocks dead ahead. There aren’t supposed to be rocks in the Atlantic between Fort Lauderdale and Bimini. Bonnie pulled out the chart and began to teach herself navigation. Twenty miles north of the island there were two dots labeled Hens and Chickens. I hadn’t known to compensate for the steady breeze and strong northerly Gulf Stream current and steered us to Hens and Chickens instead of Bimini. If we had missed sighting these low rocks, we would have cruised, obliviously, across a short stretch of the Bahamas Bank and then arrived back in the Atlantic until we ran out of gasoline far beyond the effective range of our radio. We might have drifted for days burning in the sun, or capsized in the fierce afternoon squalls that are common in the northern Bahamas. Using Hens and Chickens as a bearing, we were able to plot a successful course to Bimini. We were lucky.

  The truth is that Bonnie’s grandiose fears about our new deep-sea lives were warranted. My navigational skills were less than primitive and we had no instruments other than a compass. If the Johnson outboard had shut down in the middle of the ocean, we wouldn’t have known how to fix it. On the big Ebb Tide I had developed angling finesse, but I was no captain, not even a competent mate. The truth is, I didn’t even know what there was to learn. Sitting in the fighting chair I had never recognized the unusual challenge of piloting in the Bahamas. I didn’t appreciate the difficulty of “reading” shallow water or the need to approach cays or reef-bound passages with the sun overhead or behind us, thereby lessening the danger of ripping the boat’s bottom open on a coral reef obscured by the glare of the sun.

  My fishing passion has often warred against prudent boating sense, but particularly in the early days with Bonnie. I always wanted to go farther than the rest of the fleet, to get the baits into untrolled waters. I wanted to stay out later and test the cool night ocean; and I was intrigued by the mystery and gamble of running after dark. On the big Ebb Tide I had learned that marlin and wahoo often strike at the edges of a storm, but I didn’t think about the power of late-afternoon line squalls or the danger of big wind when you are offshore in a small open boat. I was drawn offshore by Hemingway’s and Jack London’s sensuous descriptions of wild immense oceans.

  The middle thirties, when Hemingway made his Bimini visits, was the golden age of the sport. Marlin were profuse and men were just beginning to understand how to catch them. Each hooked marlin was an adventure fraught with unexpected problems and a bigger-than-life payoff: back then, to go game fishing one had to invent ways to rig and troll baits, to discover how to take up the belly in the line while the fish jumps a quarter-mile away, how to handle these powerful fish close to the boat. It was a revelation that there were fish in the sea powerful enough to snap the heaviest tackle or that three-hundred-pound sharks were lurking nearby to mutilate hooked marlin. Fishing historian George Rieger wrote of this time, “Men fished from dawn to dusk with the enthusiasm of converts to a new religion.” That’s how I fished with Bonnie, figuring out the sport as we trolled.

  During our first trip to Bimini in the little Ebb Tide, along with navigational and boating blunders, blue marlin themselves posed an immediate and formidable threat. I should have known this, but I was busy chasing down the quarry of favorite books and childhood dreams.

  Blue marlin fishing today bears scant resemblance to Hemingway’s depiction of solitary men drift-fishing off Cuba that first captured my imagination as a thirteen-year-old. It is a technically demanding sport that usually employs an experienced angler working with the best tackle and a professional skipper with one or two mates. The boat itself could easily cost a million dollars. It is a beautiful machine, comfortable and fast and loaded with state-of-the-art navigational and fishing gear, including a tender almost the size of our little Ebb Tide.

  A skillful angler sitting in a sturdy fighting chair with a footrest doesn’t use brute strength to win the fight against a big marlin so much as timing and leverage (and, most important, adroit boat handling by the skipper). Nonetheless, since the earliest days of the sport, with notable exceptions, the top anglers have been men who train hard for long fights, building backs and legs by running, lifting weights, pulling sandbags on the beach, using rowing machines and such.

  Skippers and mates are usually physically strong men with much knowledge of rigging baits and tackle as well as experience fishing local waters. The best angler in the world will spend idle days if the captain cannot read the water and find fish. Along with refined boat-handling skills, skippers must have a keen sense for the habits and timing of a superfast and powerful game fish on the line. They know, for example, when and how to chase a fish with the boat and when the angler must wear the fish out with the raised tip of the rod, the drag of the reel and the strength of his back and legs. Catching the fish requires perfect timing and teamwork between the captain, angler and mate, who will at the end of the fight grab the wire leader. The best mates are coveted around the world by top skippers for their ability to take several wraps of heavy wire or monofilament leader around their gloved hands and to bring the fish the final fifteen feet to the side of the boat. “Wiring” a big tuna or blue marlin is showtime for the professional mate. He has spent years developing a seamless and powerful hand-over-hand pulling motion, along with a sense for when to haul with his full strength and when and how to open his hands and allow the coils of wire to slip off if the marlin is about to make a sharp turn or sprint. He mustn’t spook the fish with a jerky, indecisive yank and he must be cat quick to get out of the way should a billfish turn and jump at him.

  When the marlin is alongside, the mate may tag the fish, then cut the wire leader and let it go, or if a decision has been made to boat the fish, the captain will come down from the bridge and put a big flying gaff into the marlin (the head of a flying gaff, which looks like a meat hook with a twelve-inch diameter, breaks free from its handle when pulled into a fish. The head of the gaff remains secured to the boat by a rope), at which point all hell breaks loose. Now the two of them are trying to gaff the fish a second time while the marlin beats at the boat with his powerful tail and fearful swinging head. They reach into the froth, blood and exhaust smoke, trying to loop a tail rope over the terrified fish without getting hit by the bill or tangled in the line securing the flying gaff to a stern cleat; also they must stay clear of the leader wire, which is still running from the rod tip to the fish’s jaw. Even for the best marlin crew in the world, boating a large fish is a tense time and, despite precautions, there are accidents, some of them bizarre and terrible.

  One time Bonnie and I were fishing when a friend of ours, Vincente, an experienced mate working on the legendary Tommy Gifford’s nearby boat, had his hand pinioned to the transom by the bill of a marlin. Once the marlin had broken itself free, Gifford called us on the radio to come alongside to race the wounded man to shore, as our boat was much faster than his.

  Over the years many arms and le
gs have been broken in cockpits while anglers and crew members attempted to get out of the way of big, struggling fish. Trying to release marlin, mates have impaled themselves on the large hook they are trying to take out of the thrashing fish’s jaw. Wiring represents by far the biggest danger and crew members have had their hands crushed by the tightening wire; some have had fingers and hands sheared off when they couldn’t let go; and very strong men have become tangled in the leader and been pulled over the side.

  Writing for Motor Boating and Sailing magazine, Peter Wright, arguably the greatest living marlin skipper, described a tragedy aboard the boat Trophy Box, fishing out of Morehead City, North Carolina, in 1994:

  The strike when it came was fast and without warning—a “crash strike” as big game anglers describe that kind of sudden almost explosive attack on a bait.... Angelo Gray Ingram grabbed the rod and got into the fighting chair.

  While Ingram fought the fish, mates Chris Bowie and Ronnie Fields got everything ready and Ingram’s wife Kelly recorded the action on a video camera. In the cockpit, the washdown hose was coiled and hung up. There were no gaff ropes, stray leaders, baits or anything else on the deck to disturb Bowie’s footing when he took the leader in his gloved hands to bring the fish alongside the boat after Ingram had wound in the line up to the connecting swivel to which the leader was attached.

  According to Wright the crew assembled on the Trophy Box was one of the best on the Atlantic Coast. Alan Fields, the captain, had over thirty years of experience. The wire man in the cockpit, Chris Bowie, was an experienced and respected captain himself who had taken over one thousand billfish.

  And at 5'9" and 200 pounds, he had kept the powerful, athletic build of his days as a high school wrestler.

  When the swivel reached the rod tip, Bowie calmly and carefully took hold of the ... steel piano wire leader.... Braced against the gunwale, he then began pulling the fish to the boat.... As the fish [struggled] against Bowie’s muscular straining arms, its pectoral fins were iridescent neon-blue that signals an angry or excited state—a color never seen on a tired or beaten marlin....

  As Bowie pulled the fish closer to the surface, Alan Fields on the bridge called out, “About 175 pounds ...”

  [Bowie] pulled the fish toward the surface. His actions as he took his wraps and cleared the wire behind himself were ... calm and deliberate. The marlin darted ahead ... [but] Bowie did not let go of the wire. Bowie probably believed that he could easily hold a fish that size and that it was not really necessary to let go....

  As Ronnie Fields turned away momentarily ... before cutting the wire to release the fish Bowie held on with his knees and braced below the covering board taking the strain with his back and shoulders. Suddenly he was in the water.

  The others on board mainly remember seeing Bowie’s shoes as he went overboard. With his footing lost he first fell onto the transom covering board, then was jerked overboard into the water. His sun visor must have been pushed down over his eyes by his head-first entry. The crew saw him at the surface knocking the visor off his head as he started to turn toward the boat, then was pulled back down. He was swimming, not panicked or struggling, just below the surface with his hands outstretched together. They still expected he would be okay.

  When Bowie did not immediately come back up to the surface, Alan Fields backed Trophy Box toward him and called to Ingram to “pull him back up.” Ingram got a couple of pumps with the rod and was pulling man and fish back toward the surface ... then the wire leader broke.

  Wearing shoes, shorts and a T-shirt, Ronnie Fields, a strong swimmer and diver, leaped in to help his friend. He made one dive and came back up for air. He was not able to get down to Bowie who was 30 feet under and was being pulled deeper by the marlin. “I can’t get to him,” Fields shouted. But he tried again, nonetheless. In a few more seconds, Fields could see neither Bowie nor the marlin in the clear Gulf Stream water.

  Marlin fishing in a small open boat is risky enough and I raised the ante greatly with my inexperience and foolishness. It took some time for this to become clear. During the first fishless weeks off Bimini, I didn’t know how to rig baits properly or how far they should ride behind the boat or how fast we should troll. I lost hooks because I tied knots improperly, and I wandered into shallow water and had beautiful big baits eaten by barracudas. After I had learned a few basics, we fouled up six or eight chances before we got near a marlin, which was fortunate. Almost always the scenario was the same. After an hour or two blistering in the hot sun, I’d see a brown shape rising behind one of Bonnie’s baits, then a dorsal clipping through the white water. I’d begin screaming, “Marlin, marlin, marlin,” with the same blast horn fervor usually associated with “Help, murder, murder.” Bonnie would look toward me with alarm while I peered astern. Then, flustered and stagestruck, she would pick up the rod and strike with everything she was worth, having forgotten to drop back some slack line to the hungry fish. Time after time our mullets and mackerels came catapulting back at us, ripped out of the marlin’s mouth by her premature strikes, and the fish would slowly turn and swim away. Then I would begin berating Bonnie like Mussolini: You struck too soon. You struck too soon. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you remember to count to ten before striking? Is that so hard? She would look at me bewildered and wounded, deer-eyed. She could barely hold the heavy rod with the weight of the big bait dragging through the water. And then she had to endure my ranting in a pitching piece of fiberglass in the middle of the shark-infested ocean. But marlin possessed me.

  We couldn’t hook a marlin, but along weed lines several miles off the island I was able to find a few dolphin and sometimes we did well trolling small feathers around schools of blackfin tuna, hard pullers and delicious eating. Then, while the red sun doused itself in the Gulf Stream, I raced the boat inshore and ran along the reef until I came up to the old Avis Club, where Bill and Ansil had put the two blacktip sharks into the pool four or five years earlier; by now the hotel was abandoned and overgrown by trees and vines and its fine rooms were washed out by hurricanes, the fate of a half-dozen undercapitalized hotels on Bimini. I banked the boat sharp to the left through the inside channel I had learned as a kid, keeping her in the deepest water, which meant passing only inches from the sheer wall of coral to my starboard. We bounced a little when the strut of the engine nudged the top of a small sandbar and we were into the harbor. I smiled at Bonnie, who also loved the ride home. We raced the boat along the flats past the Bimini Big Game Fishing Club, noticing which boats carried marlin flags celebrating the day’s catch, then we turned west toward the power plant, where the inside channel ran right alongside the shore near Ansil’s house and the basketball court, teenaged Wilts, Oscars and Elgins warming up for tonight’s big game against the Cat Island All-Stars. Heading north toward Paradise Point we waved at bulky women taking down the wash and young couples hugging one another in the waist-deep warm water of the lagoon. They waved back. We had a few fish in the boat, which made me feel like a hero.

  I slowed down when we neared the rickety dock in Porgy Bay, which was right in front of Deacon Davis’s aging green shack that Ansil had rented for us for six weeks for a couple hundred dollars. While Bonnie reached for our bowline, which was coiled and resting on top of a shaky piling set off from the dock, our wake caught up with us and softly lifted the Ebb Tide, and then she settled back in the smooth evening water. Here in Porgy Bay I felt like the captain of a forty-footer.

  This was our fishing camp. Beneath the sun-bleached planks of the dock the water was busy with fish and fifty yards across the channel there were mangroves with nesting herons and egrets. Sometimes huge leopard rays burst from the calm water. What a beautiful spot. Skinny Dick Davis was sitting on the dock throwing a handline into the channel. A few Porgy Bay kids were resting on their haunches hoping for a fish to take home for dinner. As we learned the waters and brought in bigger catches, more and more kids were waiting for us on the dock. Whenever we walked the roads there were k
ids in the shadows calling “Freddy and Bonnie.”

  Bonnie went into the little house to shower and cook dinner. I hosed down the boat while chatting with Dick about the day offshore. He had been a mate during his youth, and I listened closely when he told me where to find big kingfish on the northern edge or the best way to hold a school of dolphin near the boat. He described what it was like fighting on the wire against a big marlin twenty feet below the transom that wouldn’t budge. He’d have to wrestle the fish up with his whole strength and he didn’t like to let go of the wire, it was a masculine thing. Dick showed me the scars on his hands from where the wire had cut him, and using his handline he demonstrated how he had taken three wraps on the wire. I felt excited and tense when Dick offered advice about wiring, as that would be my job when Bonnie finally hooked a marlin. As it became dark Dick pulled a white bandanna onto his face to keep off the mosquitoes and got serious about his dock fishing.