Game Fish Diaries - Chic McSherry
| The Florida Gulf | |
“What kind of fish do you catch?” I asked. “This time a’ year we mostly get kingfish” said the voice on the end of the phone. “And how do you fish for them?” I pressed, with fingers crossed. “By trolling.” Came the answer. |
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Once we got near a sunken wreck which he knew, Chuck slowed the boat and asked me to take over the steering whilst he rigged the rods. This wasn’t in the plan as far as I could recall and I had no earthly idea how to drive the thing. We rolled all over the place as I tried to correct and over-correct the steering. The compass thingy on the dashboard thingy floated around like a drunken eyeball.
Chuck, apparently used to rookie drivers, nonchalantly rigged up half a dozen frozen 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 most of my previous trolling experience had been with lures (“plastic” as some guides dismiss them). I’d never encountered ballyhoos before either. They are a small herring-like fish but with a protruding bill from their lower jaw. Odd looking things, but a great bait the world over for pelagic predators. To rig them, Chuck first snapped off the bill. 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 brightly coloured plastic squid skirt was slid down over the head to complete the ensemble.
This was my first time fishing with downriggers and they are ingenious devices. There is a metal ball with fins, which is attached to a steel cable, and this took the bait down to a pre-determined depth. A line clip secured the line just above the ball-weight and a length of leader material is fed out behind it to secure the baited hooks. When a fish strikes, the line comes out of the clip and I you are free to fight the fish whilst the ball-weight is retrieved by an electric motor. The one thing about using down riggers is that you need to troll slowly - any more than 3 knots and the ball just comes to the surface due to the underwater drag. The phenomenon is called, oddly, “blowback” and is to be avoided at all costs. Slow trolling in heavy seas may be productive, but it can cause a lot of sea-sickness if you suffer from it. Thankfully, I don’t.
I was just asking Chuck about the chances of action when he exclaimed “There’s a fish right there!” and one of the downrigger rods heeled over, reel screeching. 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.
It came up after a respectable struggle and turned out to be a nice sized barracuda. Chuck lifted it aboard and unhooked it with great care, not only out if respect for its teeth but also to preserve its life. He then held it up so that I could get a photo before slipping it back into the depths and then rebaiting the hook. The first one was in the boat - always a defining moment for the day ahead.
After resuming our trolling pattern for a couple of minutes, one of the downrigger rods went over again and we were into another fish. I didn’t need encouragement this time and lifted the (goddam) rod immediately to feel 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. Kings are related to our UK mackerel but (obviously) grow a lot bigger, hence the regal title. The dentistry is impressive too – not something you would want to get too close to with any wayward appendages.
Chuck unhooked it and it slid back into the depths whilst I again took over the steering duty, then he rebaited the hook and set the baits out again.
Within minutes of re-starting, a downrigger rod went over yet again and this time the reel screamed as though the bearings were burning out. “Looks like we got ourselves a troph-eeee,” sang Chuck.
This was a serious beast. Line was pouring from the reel as the kingfish took off towards the horizon. I fought it back to the transom and then it tore off again. Chuck told me later that these fish burned out lots of reels and I could well imagine it – the bursts of raw speed were unbelievable and I would never experience anything like it again until, years later, I caught my first wahoo.
Eventually, it was beaten and, head shaking in defiance, it came to the boat. Chuck decided that it was a “keeper” and gaffed it. He told me that he likes to keep one every once in a while for to have it smoked, but I suspected that he’s just like all 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.
We caught another two smaller fish on that trip and the last take was from another trophy-sized fish which 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 slightly. I could see the fish planing on the surface and knew that I should ease the drag, but in my ignorance of the gear I didn’t know how. It shook its head violently twice and then was gone.
It looked about the same size as the other big one, around the 35-40lbs mark - a nice kingfish. “Time we went back I think,” said Chuck.
About a year later I fished again with Chuck 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.
On the first night in the new dock, the boat was burgled and all of his beautiful gear was stolen. His rods and reels were all worth a great deal of money and he had to use old, borrowed, gear in the meantime. 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 7 or 8 feet, which is big enough in Chuck’s 33 foot boat to get you slung around like a Saturday night drunk when you’re trolling at only 3 knots. 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 in it then?” 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.
On the way in, he told me that he had just sold his house on Captiva for a small fortune. He’d bought it years 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 house 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 so much real estate.”
But the kind of numbers Chuck was talking about 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 the guy, starting out again like that at well past sixty years old. Haven’t seen nor heard of him since, but I’m pretty sure he’ll still be making his presence felt someplace…and falling out with those who got in his way.