Denizens of the Deep

by Philip Wylie

  “Some of the big-game anglers knew about the awful rations down there—from talks with Army people—and from flying to the war by way of the place. They thought guides like myself could find out how to get those offshore fish—and it turned out that the Government sent me down to investigate the situation.

  “Remember the wartime shortages? Fishing tackle was so short it wasn’t. I rummaged over half the country collecting gear. I got flown down there, finally, with about three hundred pounds of stuff. The Navy had left an old boat on shore there—a forty-five-footer of the commercial swordfish type. We got her in condition and took her out to sea. I had ten men assigned to me by the Army. Not one was a fisherman of any sort.

  “Anyhow—the first crack, we hit Allison tuna. They’re related to the ones we’re looking for today—but smaller—and gaudier. Lot of yellow on them. Run from a hundred to two-seventy-five pounds. Well—we marked the ledge where we found the fish with a buoy. To anchor that, even, in the seas and currents around there, we used a whole, old motor. Seven of the ten soldiers assigned me got too seasick for fishing. But three of them panned out fine.

  “We began operations the next day—our buoy was about two miles offshore in sixteen fathoms. No fancy fishing. Hand lines—tough ones—gloves on your mitts—and haul ’em in as fast as you could. We four guys—the three that didn’t get sick, and myself—caught eleven hundred pounds of tuna in three hours. Day after, we tried bottom-fishing closer in. They had billions of jacks down there—looked something like blue jack—but they tasted like pompano, which is about as fine an eating fish as swims. Those jacks ran from ten to twenty-five pounds—and we chummed them up—then dropped baited hooks over. We nailed fifteen hundred pounds of them in one day—the four of us.”

  Eddie paused and shook his head slowly. “If you’ve never been stuck on a dusty, barren island for months, without fresh meat, you can’t imagine the effect of that fishing. I never saw people eat fish like that in my life—and never will again. Officers and men. Anyhow—I got the ‘commercial fishing’ operation set up—and from then on, there was fresh fish on the Ascension menu. I went back there later with more gear—spent about three months on the job, all told. And I’d like to go back again some day—to sports fish. Not just for the jacks and the Allison tunas. There were other fish around there—red-hot fish—too hard to try for, when you needed meat so badly. But the shark-mangled remains of one wahoo that somebody caught weighed a hundred and fifty pounds!” He looked at the sea over the stern of the Playmate. “An eighty-pounder is a whopper, around Bimini here.”

  Later, I learned that Eddie was supposed to be on a “per diem” basis while he did this astonishing and novel war job. Only, somehow, he never collected. And I also found out that, to get the tackle he thought the boys needed on Ascension, he spent a lot of his own money. Only, he never turned in a bill. His son Gene was in uniform; he was doing his bit to help the Wall war record.

  Any readers of this book who passed dreary weeks on Ascension—and there will be many—if they recall fresh fish as a precious break in Army rations—ought to offer up a silent vote of thanks to Captain Eddie Wall. It takes the kind of man who will hook, fight and boat a mako shark—alone and for fun—to make the kind who can pioneer far and foreign seas in jerry-made boats for the benefit of his hungry countrymen.

  Eddie told me that story, and was adding a few minor details, when our first tuna struck. As was said earlier, the angler—in this case myself—felt as if he was trying to stop an elevator that had broken loose in the shafts of something higher than the Empire State Building. And when, a half hour later, the thousandth violent heave by your correspondent pulled the hook out of said tuna, Eddie was more disappointed than I. After all, I’d caught tunas before. And furthermore—though I didn’t mention it to Eddie—I was beginning to wonder whether I really wanted to fight that fish to the end or not. Anybody who has battled a tuna will ask himself the same question after half an hour or so. After a couple of hours, he may have a quite definite opinion about his folly.

  At this moment (1950), Eddie Wall’s guiding has an other-than-sporting aspect. He and his son and their Playmate are assisting in the collection of specimens which are being used to stock the extraordinary pens of the Lerner Marine Laboratory in Bimini. This laboratory—a field station of the American Museum of Natural History—maintains alive in stockades in the harbor such monstrosities as manta rays. They contain the first dolphins, so far as are known, that have ever lived in captivity. Giant tuna and white marlin are on the list of fishes wanted alive by the scientists; and Captain Wall, along with the famed Bill Hatch and Doug Osborne—two more of the world-traveled guides—have been assisting in the hunt.

  Not every man is able to troll in the deep, blue water for the whoppers. This has occasioned some envy on the part of those who cannot enjoy the sport. And the envy has led to some deprecation of deep-sea fishing. It needn’t do so. Eddie Wall can tell you why.

  “A man with unlimited time and funds naturally has the best chance at a big fish,” he says. “But luck enters into the proposition more than you might expect. In the fifteen years I’ve been a guide, for instance, I’ve fished men who could afford it for weeks—and seen them come to the end of long charters without a spectacular catch. But I’ve also been chartered—over and over again—by, say, three or four guys who split the costs and went out for a single day—and broke some record or other!

  “Anybody can afford a quarter of a day’s charter once in a while—and anybody who has a line in the sea is even with everybody else—however many days the other guys may have been at it. You know. Fishing is like flipping a penny and having it come up heads a hundred times straight. The odds that it will come heads the next flip are—still—fifty-fifty. I’ve seen—as a matter of fact—one Florida record—for broadbill—busted by a man who went out for a half day. He had never fished before. And he never went again. Guess he thought he could rest on his laurels from there on in.”

  There’s another thing. The enjoyment of fishing is relative. The reader has noted that the taking of a fish—even a big one like a white marlin—on tackle meant for something still bigger—isn’t sport at all. It is cold assassination. So the man with the fly rod in the rowboat enjoys a prospect of excitement that, relatively, is no different from that experienced by the man with heavy tackle in the stern of a cruiser. Here, again, Eddie Wall may be cited as a super-authority.

  “Personally,” he says, “I like all kinds of fishing. In fact, in some ways, I like plug casting and fly casting best. At least—when I take a day off, maybe a couple of times a year, I always load my car with light tackle—fly rods, casting rods, spinning gear—and drive out along the canals. Or I may take an outboard around the Cape—after some little tarpon or, maybe, snook and jacks. Boy!”

  Busman’s holiday! And Everyman’s sport.

  All over the world there are fishermen wondering what lies in the waters they now have no way to reach. All over the world there are anglers who have seen something they couldn’t identify and who desperately long to boat a specimen of it. In Fiji and the Philippines, in New Zealand and in Ceylon, in Capetown and in Rio. Here and there, around the world, men are making plans to find out what that lost monster was—and how to take it. That kind of curiosity led to the discovery that big squid can be caught on rod and reel off Chile, for example. It led to the taking of the first marlin on sports tackle, and the first sailfish. It led, long ago, to that famous matter of the eating of the first oyster. And all over the United States, as well as some other countries, there are guides ready to go anywhere and see what’s what.

  Guides to whom no spot is too remote, if big fish are rumored to live there. Guides to whom no fishing method is too dizzy to try—so long as it conforms with the rules of good sportsmanship. Guides who, even in the normal course of events, fish by summer and winter from harbors a couple of thousand miles apart. Born fishermen who take their pride and their excitement in fish caught by thei
r customers. Nomads of the sea—they turn strange legends into fishing feats that are, still, of legendary proportions. And wherever they hit the jack pot—more anglers come in their wake—you, perhaps, and I. The widespread notion that pioneering ceased years back is plain silly—when you consider the sea.

  The IGFA

  There is probably no more thrill-packed sports document in existence than the World Record Chart of the International Game Fish Association. All it is, in actual fact, is a printed table, about the size of an automobile road map, which lists the various marine game fish of the world and the biggest of each species that has been taken, so far as is known, on a variety of graduated sizes of tackle. But, by implication, it is the story of the top achievements in a great sport—a summary of daring and unusual episodes in the lives of outdoor men and women. Often enough, furthermore, the tales of the fish that were almost records, or almost eligible—are wilder and stranger than the accounts of the world-beaters.

  Imagine, for instance, the predicament of Mr. X—a noted sports angler and light-tackle expert—trolling for sailfish off Mexico in the Pacific with his equally renowned friend, Mr. Y. Mr. X is using three-thread line, which has a breaking strain of just nine pounds. Mr. Y’s six-thread line will break under a strain of eighteen pounds. A sailfish—a monster—appears behind the baits: huge, cobalt dorsal fin—slicing black bill. It takes Mr. X’s bait—but before Mr. X can strike, the sail shoots across the wake of the fishing cruiser and also gulps Mr. Y’s bait.

  Then, having cleaned up the visible viands, the sailfish runs. Both lines come tight. Both reels scream.

  These anglers are expert. They know the fish is a whopper, and that it may even be a record. But it is much more likely to be a record on the lighter of the two lines. So Mr. Y immediately tightens his reel-drag to a point which causes his six-thread line to snap. Thereafter, Mr. X is solely attached to the giant and he begins the long, dramatic, yet cautious battle by which a fish that weighs more than a hundred pounds is sometimes caught on a line that will break if, at any time, more than nine pounds of stress is put on it. In due course, Mr. X boats the fish. It is rushed to shore and weighed. The World Record Chart is consulted. Sure enough—this sail is bigger than anything shown for tackle of the class used. It’s a world record—if the judges decide it was fairly caught.

  An International Game Fish Association (or “IGFA”) application blank is filled out, question by question. It is signed by witnesses and by a weighmaster and notarized. A sample of the line used is sent with the application to IGFA headquarters at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. And Mr. X gets the decision in due course.

  One of the rules makes it plain that the angler must hook and fight his fish unaided and without interference. The fact that his sailfish was attached, even if only for seconds, both to a three-thread line and to a six-thread line means that a single angler did not do every bit of the “catching” of the fish. It means that the sailfish fought not only against Mr. X’s line but also against the hook, bait and dragging broken line of Mr. Y. It may have been easier for Mr. X to hook the fish in the moment when Mr. Y tightened his drag and broke his line. A fine feat of angling—and a noble gesture on the part of Mr. Y to break his line—a world-record-size sailfish—but one not caught quite according to Hoyle, wherefore, no record.

  Sometimes it goes the other way. Somebody who has never been deep-sea fishing before in his (or her) life is taken out for a day’s trolling by a friend. The novice has a tremendous strike—of he knows not what—and hangs on. Directions and exhortations come from friend and boatmen. The battle rages for minutes, for hours. The inexperienced angler brings his quarry to boat. It is weighed, the chart is examined, and the application filed. Then—good news! More than one world record is held by a “first time” fisherman—which goes to show that luck is part of the game.

  Luck isn’t all. On two different occasions I have seen average anglers deliberately go after a world record in a certain class of tackle, for a particular species of fish—and get it! How come? The explanation is simple. Even after years of record-keeping, on various sizes of tackle and for various rather common species of fishes, the standing entry may be nothing much as the breed goes—or there may be no entry at all. The IGFA will not list just any fish as a world record. You need a king-sized specimen for the tackle you use, to get on the Big Board. But, in the classifications where there is no entry, or where the entry is not notably huge, all you need is patience and determination—along with a modicum of good fortune—to “knock off” the incumbent record or to fill in the blank space. Light-tackle records, especially, often change because big-fish angling on light tackle is still a comparatively new sport. Everybody has a chance!

  There is no end to the dilemmas of the judges. Here’s one on which there has been argument but no decision: Is a fish that jumps into the boat fair caught? This writer holds that it is not. But at least one of the most exacting anglers in the land holds that if you hook a fish foolish enough thus to boat himself, and if he happens to be of record size, it’s your good luck. There has been no decision on the matter because no fish of record size has yet jumped aboard. But plenty of big ones, in their wild, pinwheel leaps, have come down not in the sea but on the deck. I have had five hundred pounds of marlin jump higher than my head within six feet of the gunwale—frightening everybody with the expectation that the next leap might end amongst ourselves. There are authentic instances of arms and legs broken by tarpon that leaped into small boats and continued their frenetic activities in the midst of people—not purposely, but by accident or miscalculation.

  So it is almost certain that someday an application will come in for a fish “caught” in that way—and the IGFA executive committee will have to decide the matter.

  A “mutilated” fish is not eligible for a record. And some of the biggest fish caught, unfortunately, are mutilated. Their very size nearly always means that the fight will be extra long. That, in turn, spells steadily increasing peril of the marine angler’s greatest menace: shark. A fish may be nearly beaten and very tired—but not yet so weary that the angler can bring him to gaff. Yet when a marauding shark appears, the hooked fish may be unable to keep clear. The result is an attack—an attack which often kills and always weakens the game fish; hence, when it is brought mutilated to boat, it is not considered fair caught. The angler must bring in a whole fish.

  But what about this one? Recently, an official of the IGFA was called by ship-to-shore phone for a ruling. An anguished competitor in a tournament has just boated a tuna which would put himself and his team in the lead—if it was eligible. But its eligibility was contested because that particular tuna had been bitten, apparently by a shark, though not during the battle. The bites were weeks old and pretty well healed. Did they count against the angler—or was that natural misfortune of the fish an acceptable “break” which made it, perhaps, easier for the fisherman to boat his quarry?

  I was the official called. I didn’t have to get a ruling made; for the IGFA offers ruling only in the question of applications for world records. I explained that fact. The frantic fishermen implored me, then, to get an “unofficial opinion”—because, he said, the tournament judges had been unwilling to commit themselves and feeling about the matter was intense. By long distance and local phone, by wire and letter, I hurriedly got together some entirely unofficial opinions, but before I could offer them, the tournament committee reached what the IGFA experts had agreed was probably the best possible decision:

  If it was established that the old injuries no longer materially weakened the tuna, it should be regarded as fair caught. (Fish, after all, have diseases. They even have cancer. And there is no rule against a world record for a sick fish; a health card is not part of the requirements.) But if the old mutilations were such as still to weaken the tuna, it was generally, though not unanimously, felt that the catch should be disqualified.

  Disqualifications are sometimes humanly hard to make. A
magnificent marlin was taken, not long ago, on quite light tackle, by a war veteran who was physically handicapped. He had fought the fish all day. But at one point, for a period of about ten minutes, he had surrendered the rod to a boat mate. The marlin was heavy enough for a record. But the rule says that the record maker must have caught his fish alone. Other physically handicapped men have made records. There is an authentic account of the taking of a swordfish by a woman after a singlehanded, unbroken battle of more than thirty hours! Feats of that sort—feats sometimes doubted by persons who believe that a harpoon rather than a rod and reel is the suitable gear for big-fish fishing—show why the IGFA is uncompromising.

  The rules have to be absolute. Any fisherman (like your reporter, for an example) who has fought fish through the heat of day into the dark of night, through tumultuous storms on seas higher than his cruiser was long, in hard rains and icy gales and lightning, drifting far from shore in the battle—any such fisherman—knows that the iron-clad rules of the IGFA are his best protection. A sport without rules is not a sport—it’s a racket. With firm rules—and experts to judge—the angler knows that no one will get away with short cuts to an achievement that he has found so difficult and so challenging. Members of the executive committee of the IGFA—of which I’m one—are not, in any case, eligible to hold world records. But it is reassuring for them—as for all fishermen—to realize that every imaginable human effort is made to rule out gypping from big-game angling.