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" Teenage
Mutant Ninja
Tuna " |
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Dean, up in the tower, stared astern, disbelief on his face as the rings from the swirl widened and faded behind the slowly moving 31-footer boat. A thousand hours of fruitless trolling suddenly flashed before my eyes. How could it happen again? But it had. Our last strike had been 51 weeks earlier, in July of '88. Same thing. Late morning, sunny with just a gentle southwest breeze, a couple miles below Bantam Rock off Boothbay Harbor, Maine. But at least that fish had gotten a taste of the rubber squid, swallowing two out of the 13 we had been trolling behind the stainless steel spreader bar before spitting the whole works out and bolting back into the depths. The squid with the hook hadn't been touched. One in a million, we had thought at the time. Just plain bad luck. It surely couldn't happen again. "Ogodogodogod! Did you see the size of that thing? Seven-hundred, easy. Maybe eight!" "What do we gotta do?" Dean hollered down. He shook his head. Ten seconds later it happened. There was another swirl, smaller, behind the same squid rig, and the tip of a black, sickle-shaped dorsal fin showed for an instant. The line suddenly ripped free from the outrigger pin and the spool of the two-speed 9/0 jerked into life. The rod arched over and the bowstring-tight 130-pound Dacron line pinged and crackled against the heavy drag as the fish dove. I wrestled the rod out of the holder and managed to hang on, the butt digging into my groin as the tuna surged away. We were hooked up. For real. My first thought was "We've got to let the whole world know!" Whether we landed the fish or not, at that point, was immaterial. Somehow it didn't matter what the outcome would be. The fact that we had finally got one of the ten of the big buggers to bite -- and stay hooked -- was front page news in itself. At least to us. I made the announcement on the VHF radio. The airwaves went silent. Dean climbed into the fighting chair as more line peeled from the reel, and together we steered the rod butt into the gimbal socket. The fish turned, stopped, and held fast, giving me just enough time to wind the other lines in and stash the rods on deck behind the chair. It wasn't long before Dean and I realized that we were one man short of a tuna team. I had to stay on the controls to keep the line away from the propellers, and Dean had to stay in the chair to fight the fish. Who would wire the fish and gaff it when it was time? For a while, that part didn't matter. If we would land the fish at all it would be light years in the future, or so it seemed. Dean, without benefit of a harness, pumped and reeled with determination. The noon-day sun became hot. I helped Dean off with his jacket, then lunged for the helm as the tuna reversed direction and dove under the boat. I backed the stern hard to port and we both breathed a sigh of relief. The tuna bored deep and sulked. An hour slipped by. At 12:30 the fish appeared off the quarter and started swimming with us, easily, conserving its energy. Only about ten feet down and less than 20 feet away, we could see it perfectly, the hook in the corner of its jaw and trailing the other 12 pink rubber squids. Its tail beat back and forth behind the purple-blue bulk of its back, and impossibly bright yellow finlets gleamed like nuggets of gold. I knew it wasn't the monster that had first taken a swipe at our rig, but it was a decent tuna just the same. "About 500," my heart silently assured me, but my brain interrupted. "Four-hundred if you lucky!" This was a smart, tough young fish. A teenage mutant ninja tuna, perhaps? It dogged determinedly off the quarter, turning as we turned and refusing to yield to the sideways pressure of the line. Each time I left the helm to pick up the harpoon it sidled under the boat, forcing me to leap for the wheel. Twice Dean released tension on the reel's drag and I raced the boat ahead, hoping to put some distance between us and the fish so it would have to fight the rod and line. But each time it swam back and stayed just out of reach. At 1:15 the cast-aluminum pin broke free from the chair's gimbal and the rod but slammed down through. Due to the new and rather interesting position of the reel, Dean would involuntarily strike himself in a rather sensitive area each time he cranked the handle, causing his eyes to bulge out briefly with every revolution. But he hung in there. As hour number three approached, a lot of thoughts ran through my head. Why was this fish so tough? I had boated bigger ones in the past, including a 937-pound monster, my largest, but that had been a long time ago and none had been as obstinate as this one. And why had we gone out without a third crewman, a virtual necessity? Where was the harness? Where was the head to the flying gaff? It wasn't even rigged! The wind valiantly held on, gaining a foot of line, then losing it. It was a classic Mexican standoff. "How are you guys doing?" A voice broke through on the radio. it was Matt Wilder on the Lucky Star, another Boothbay charter boat. I looked around and spotted him heading towards us. "Not so good," I replied, and quickly summarized our predicament. "A.J. says he's willing to come aboard and help," Matt radioed. "I'll try and get close enough to put him on your bow. I maneuvered. Mat maneuvered. The increasing chop made it more difficult as each minute passed. Finally A.J., who had been standing on the Lucky Star's pulpit waiting for the right moment to jump, suddenly disappeared from view. Matt backed away in a puff of blue exhaust smoke. My heart sank. A.J. Campbell, one of Maine's very finest big-game anglers and charter boat mates, was momentarily going to drown or get minced up in someone's propellers. Most likely ours. And worse, we'd probably end up losing the fish. But then I noticed four strange white things on my own pulpit. I squinted. A pair of white-knuckled hands and a pair of white boat-shoe soles came together. Seconds later the irrepressible A.J. hoisted himself up from under the pulpit, where he had been hanging on like a tree sloth, and ker-thunked down into the cockpit. "Hi!" he casually greeted us as if we'd all just run into each other outside the men's room at McSeagull's bar. We were very happy to see him. A.J. donned a pair of leather gloves, took a wrap on the line, and horsed the tuna closer. I picked up the harpoon and drove it home. There were lots of tangles, splashing and hollering. I don't remember, but I think I passed out. If so, I awoke to a calm, almost reassuring voice repeating itself in my ear. "Do you have a tail rope? Do you have a tail rope? Do you..." Things were a little blurry, but I could make out A.J. and Dean standing at the side of the cockpit, leaning over and peering into the water. A.J. asked again, in the kind of voice you'd ask someone what time it is. No urgency at all. "Do you have a tail rope?" I remember thinking "Why in God's name would anyone ask about a tail rope at a time like this? Then everything came into focus and I looked over the side. There was our tuna, snubbed up and ready for a tail rope. Dean opened the transom gate.. I got a meat hook in the fish's jaw and we all heaved back and pulled the glistening tuna aboard headfirst. We lashed his tail to the fighting chair stanchion for good measure, and then toasted each other -- and the fish -- with a shared can of warm Orange Crush. Dean ran the tuna flag up the outrigger, and A.J. headed the boat toward home. I sat down on the bait cooler and wondered, with the pounded in my chest, whether I was going to have a heart attack or a nervous breakdown. I figured it was even money either way. I don't care what anyone tells you, the real kick in catching a bluefin tuna is when you bring it back to the dock. All the tourists crowd around and take pictures with their little auto focus cameras, and there's always some guilty-looking guy who has his wife take a picture of him standing alongside the fish, as if he caught it. The other fisherman who have boats at the same dock swallow hard and come forward to congratulate you, each secretly wishing that it had been him, instead of you, who had caught a tuna that day. I know. Our fish -- and it was indeed "our" fish -- Dean's (mostly), A.J.'s and mine, tipped the scales at Brown's Wharf at 440 pounds. It was no mammoth in the world of giant tuna fishing, but it was plenty big enough for us. It had been a long time -- nine years too long -- since our last one. "Biggest fish I ever caught!" exclaimed Dean as the buyer swung the tuna into his refrigerated truck. I noticed that his voice was about half an octave higher than I remembered. "Gosh, jeez, you really ought to try and find your tail rope some time," admonished A.J. tactfully as the truck headed out of the parking lot. There wasn't much for me to say. I sat down on a lobster
crate and watched the taillights disappear into the darkness, wondering if
my heart would ever stop pounding. |
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The
swirl behind the right outrigger bait, easily the size of my living room
rug, glowed an iridescent blue-green at its center as the huge tuna rolled
on its side and sounded. It had missed the tail-end rubber squid, the one
with the hook in it. I was stunned.