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“What kind of fish do you
catch?” I asked. “This time a’ year we mostly
get kingfish” said the voice. “And how do you fish for
them?” I responded, with fingers crossed. “By trolling.” Came the
answer. Bingo! Just what I wanted to
hear. I had been trying, without any success, to get a boat in the
Captiva or Sanibel area to take me out into the Gulf for a days
trolling. I hadn’t tried deep-sea fishing for six years or more and,
in my book, the only “proper” way to do deep-sea fishing was to
troll. I booked the charter. The voice on the phone belonged
to a crusty old guy called Captain Chuck Skinner and you got the instant
impression that this was his boat by god and you’d better do as you
were told. He wasn’t belligerent or rude: just had that no-nonsense
approach to what he did that told you to know your place and mind your
p’s and q’s. After some persuasion, my wife
Jenny had decided to tag along. Jenny does not like fish and cannot
understand my obsession with fishing. But, she thought she fancied a
trip in the boat for a day and when she saw Chuck’s boat, she was
convinced. The boat was immaculate. It was
what all sportfishing boats should be but too few of them are. Chuck was
meticulous on board; a place for everything and everything in it’s
place and Jenny liked that too. She had found a kindred spirit.
Chuck rigged up half a dozen
ballyhoo baits; two on flat lines to the rear, two on outriggers and two
on down riggers. He then came back and took the wheel/con/whatever and
the boat stopped lurching about as he expertly started a trolling
pattern. I was interested in the bait rigging as all my previous
trolling had been with lures (plastic as they are dismissed by some
guides). First, the small ballyhoo's bill was snapped off, then a nose
cone made out of a wire spiral was fitted over the head and held in
place with an elastic band. Two flying treble hooks on wire traces were
inserted either side of the bait and finally a plastic squid skirt was
slid down over the head of the ballyhoo. I was asking him about the chances of action when he exclaimed “There’s a fish right there!” and one of the downrigger rods heeled over. I just stood looking at him, not knowing what to do. “Well, what are you waiting for – lift the goddam rod!” Sheepishly, I lifted the goddam rod and fought the fish.
The downrigger rod went over
again and we were into another fish. I didn’t need encouragement this
time and lifted the rod immediately to fight a bigger and stronger fish.
After a few searing runs, I had it to the boat. It was our first
kingfish, or king mackerel.; a beautiful striped green torpedo with rows
of sharp teeth. Chuck unhooked it and it slid
back into the depths. During this time, Jenny was steering the boat and
when I asked her how she was, she merely stared straight ahead, fixedly
on the horizon. I retreated to the boat deck and opened a coke.
Maybe she won't be fine after all, I started to realise. Within minutes of re-starting,
the downrigger went over again and this time the reel screamed as though
the bearings were burning out. “Looks like we got ourselves a troph-ee,”
sang Chuck. This was a serious fish. Line
was pouring from the reel as it took off towards the horizon. I would
fight it close and then it would tear off again. Chuck said that these
fish burned lots of reels out and I could well imagine it – the speed
was unbelievable and I would never experience anything like it again
until, years later, I caught a wahoo. Eventually, it came to the boat
and Chuck decided it was a “keeper” and gaffed it. He likes to keep
one every once in a while for smoking he said, but I suspect he’s like
all of the rest of us in that we all need to keep one every once in a
while to remind us of why we do it.
I called to Jenny to take a photo and got a look that would have
killed a lesser man. She wasn’t doing well at all now. We took another two smaller fish and every time we stopped the boat to fight the fish, Jenny got greener and greener. The last take was from another trophy-sized fish and it tore off into the distance again. I fought it back several times and had it within 30 feet of the boat when for some reason Chuck accelerated the boat. I could see the fish on the surface and knew that I should ease the drag, but I didn’t know how. It shook its head violently twice and was gone.
I fished again once more with
Chuck, about a year later. I went out on my own this time and he was
more talkative and chatty on this trip. He was the type of American that
has two main grudges against the Brits: World War Two and the Royal
Family, in no particular order of importance. I just nodded along with
his sometimes caustic observations, after all it’s always interesting
to see us as others do. He’d also had to move his boat to another dock
since last time because he had fallen out with the owner of the Sanibel
Marina where he had been previously. I could see how Chuck could have
several fall-outs in his lifetime. I liked him a lot. The first night in his new dock
he was burgled and all of his beautiful gear stolen. His rods and reels
were all worth a great deal of money and he had to use old gear in the
meantime. But what’s a man to do when the insurance won’t pay out?
Maybe he had fallen out with them too. We didn’t catch much that day,
only one king and several barracuda. The wind got up and the seas
swelled to well over 8 or 9 feet, which is big enough in Chuck’s 33
foot boat to get you slung around like a Saturday night drunk. I asked
him if there was any weather that he wouldn’t consider going out in
and, to my amazement, he said, “I wouldn’t go out in this!” “So why the hell are we out
here?” I replied. “Well,” he said “it’s too late to decide
once you’re out here isn’t it! Wanna head back?” he grinned,
wolfishly. The trip back was bumpy and we
were regularly soaked by spray crashing over the top of the boat, but
Chuck was all confidence and we were soon in calmer waters. Chuck told me that he had just
sold his house on Captiva for almost a million dollars. He’d bought it
years ago before Captiva became a hideaway for the rich and this guy
from New York had just up and offered him the money. He added that the
guy didn’t really want the house, he only wanted the land and the
first thing he would do was bulldoze the house flat and start building
another one on the site. “Kinda strange feeling
that,” confided Chuck “I built that house and raised my kids there.
Strange that to someone else it’s just real estate.” But a million bucks buys a
substantial pension. He told me that he was going to buy a big trailer
and tour around the mid-west for a while, catching up with some people
that he hadn’t seen in years and then maybe he’d come back and start
skippering for another guy on a bigger boat. You have to admire a guy
starting again like that at well past sixty years old. Haven’t seen nor heard of him in three or more years, but I’m sure he’s still falling out with people.
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