Game Fish Diaries - Chic McSherry

I had arrived at 10.00 am local time after a 17 hour overnight flight from Paris and I was due on the boat by 1.00 pm. At the time I felt like Action Man, but looking back I was probably just plain nuts. The jet lag wasn’t funny on a rolling boat – my head felt like a hot air balloon attached to a trampoline at a kids party.

First, though, I checked into my hotel, the Veranda Bungalows, and it was very pleasant. Pleasant, that is, apart from the squadrons of mosquitoes laying in wait for me in my room. Luckily the porter provided me with a mosquito killer and the room had a ceiling fan rather than air conditioning, which I always think is better as the mossies can’t seem to fly too well in a stiff breeze. You will understand that I had the thing turned up permanently to cyclone Connie level. It was like sleeping through a scene from “Apocalypse Now”. Jim Morrison’s “This is the end…” haunted my dreams.

I had chartered my boat from a company called Sportfisher as I had fished with them before on my previous visit. They remembered me and even put me with the same skipper, Michel, who didn’t speak a word of English on my first trip and still doesn’t. There were also two crew on board (necessary when you’re fishing for big, dangerous fish like these) and one of them, Bruno, spoke English well enough for us to make small talk but not enough for a full-blown conversation.

The boat was a 43ft custom built game fishing boat called Paille en-Queue III (pronounced Pai On Koo – you can pronounce the III yourself) and she was fully equipped with a galley, head, shower, bunks, three fighting chairs, outriggers and nine (count ‘em) marlin rods: three 130lb class, two 80s, and four 50s. All I had to do was sit back, relax and prepare for battle.

The first day, though, passed with only a near miss as a sailfish was raised and teased towards the boat. Its huge scythe-like tail sliced through the waves as it shot forward and swirled at the lures, but it didn’t strike - so day one remained blank. I had never before seen a billfish up close in the water like that. It was a very exciting consolation to see the tailfin and the bronze shape below the lures, so close I could almost touch it.

On day two we hit a big wahoo of 50lb within one hour of leaving shore. I love catching wahoo because they are basically a long, cigar-shaped tube of solid muscle with a collection of interlocking razors at the front end where most normal creatures have teeth. It’s unusual to hang onto them without a wire trace on the line but this one stuck, although the fight was disappointing on the 130lb tackle. It still tasted fine though. The wahoo was followed quickly by two dorado (even more delicious) and then three bonito tuna (kinda tough but good in a curry).

But no marlin for me that day either. Two of the other Sportfisher boats had billfish - a marlin of 140 lbs and a sailfish of 72lbs. There were lots of birds out there and where there are birds there are shoals of tuna and where there are tuna, there are marlin. Hopes were still high.

A torrential downpour, Leon’s legacy, started that evening and carried on into the night. You know the effect of throwing cold water on sauna rocks? Well imagine it over a few hundred square miles of volcanic pumice and you’ll get an idea of just what happened to the temperature and humidity.

Day three was christened Big Tuna Wednesday as I caught two yellowfin tuna (122lbs and 88lbs) as well as three bonitos and a cracking big dorado. I love dorado - acrobatic chameleons changing colours from electric blue and silver through to green and gold during the fight. That fish weighed probably around 30lbs which is a nice size for dorado as they are a very short-lived fish.

The first yellowfin of the day was a real struggle because I fought it without a harness. It was tough but I got it to the boat reasonably quickly, despite the pressure on my arms. The crew got very excited when they saw it and it took all three of them to get it aboard. They clearly thought it was a small one when we hooked it and had just left me to it. When it was brought aboard, Bruno reckoned it had swallowed the lure too deep to fight properly, but the ache in my arms told me different. I might be getting older, but I’m still pretty fit and I had been training for weeks for the trip so I’m sticking with the line that I gave that fish as good as I got, harness or no. I like to tell myself that the crew gave me more respect after that – mucho hombre. But maybe not…

The second tuna hit later in the day and the crew took no chances and harnessed me up immediately. It was a lot easier fighting in the harness and I fought the very strong fish to the boat pretty quickly, the heavy gear making pretty easy work of the task.

The unusual thing about these tuna was that both of them disgorged some of their prey when brought aboard. The bait-fish they had been feeding on were tiny - only an inch or so long and bright orange in colour, yet both tuna had taken the big 12” marlin lures with some authority. Yellowfin are plentiful around Mauritius most of the year, but there is a massive run in March/April and Michel had once skippered a boat that had brought back almost 2 tons of fish to the dock. God knows where they stored the fish on board. And the mind boggles as to the condition of the anglers after that day: yellowfin tuna are real scrappers.

At the dock later that evening I heard a Scots voice. Another one answered and I eariwigged on their conversation until I discovered that the voices came from two guys from Edinburgh. Stoo, an electrical contractor, was fishing there for his eleventh consecutive year and Brian, a nightclub owner, was his fishing buddy for that year. They were both fishing on one of the other boats in the Sportfisher fleet (there are five boats in the fleet – all immaculate).

What a small world. It was great to blether to someone who understood what I was saying the first time I said it and to be able to speak at normal speed. We drank a lot of local beer and the owner of the Sportfisher fleet, Benoit (pronounced Ben-wa) invited us all for a barbecue the next night at his house.

On the way from my hotel to the barbie the next evening, I passed the local fish market where the marlin and sailfish which had been caught that day were being butchered. It wasn't a pretty sight (or smell) with swarms of flies all over the fish. Interestingly, some of the locals were taking away the intestines of the fish in plastic bags. Perhaps it was to make soup - but for all I know it could have been a remedy for mouth ulcers or just plain cat-food. Marlin are not wasted on the island, that's for sure, and the local specialty is smoked marlin which is delicious. It was, nonetheless, a sad sight to see these magnificent game fish being unceremoniously chopped up by the roadside.

Benoit and his wife Karen were fabulous hosts. Talking to Benoit, I had to admire the man. He had built the business from scratch and for many years he had lived on the boats as well as skippering them for clients. Remarkably, he builds his own boats and does so without any technical aids whatsoever – not even a calculator. He does it all by his experienced eye and his perfect boats are highly sought after throughout the island and beyond. His business is now thriving, thankfully, and we swapped stories of building something from scratch and how friends and relatives, and even loved ones, never appreciate just how much it costs you personally.

That day’s fishing had been strange. We trolled forever it seemed.

Occasionally we saw small groups of birds shadowing dorados, but the fish were not temptable. Then, just when I was at the end of my boredom threshold and was about to ask the guys to try something else, we saw some birds and we headed over in their direction. Suddenly a bronze shape appeared behind the boat in the spread. I could see it clearly in the water and it flitted between the lures like a hummingbird at a bunch of flowers. And then, just as suddenly, it was gone.

Jean Francois hand-lined the lures in and we found the leader abraded on one and the plastic scored on another. The fish had knocked the lures about with its bill, perhaps out of curiosity, but didn’t actually bite.

Ten minutes later, we spotted a huge flock of birds on tuna and we headed over to investigate. On the way, Michel said “Oook!” and nodded vaguely towards a passing oil tanker. I agreed sagely; an "Oook" was it eh? Bruno explained; “Oook” was the Creole name for a large dolphin like creature (false killer whale I reckoned) and he described them as “A very dangerous feesh. You hook a marlin and they eat it!” False killers do attack marlin; in fact in 2003 a wildlife cameramen filming in the waters off Hawaii caught an attack on tape. For his troubles, the guy was speared through the shoulder by the marlin as it frantically attempted to escape its predators.

The bonito were everywhere and the “Oook” were shadowing them, wallowing lazily near the surface then rolling and diving gracefully into the blue water. We had another tangle on the port side and as I watched Michel and Jean Francois work on it, something caught my eye. About 30 yards from the boat, a huge scythe like fin was cruising down a wave. Then I saw its back – the blue stripes, the small dorsal fin… It was a cruising marlin, no question in my mind. “Mahle, mahle, mahle!” I bellowed in excitement, pointing energetically. The crew let the lines out and Bruno, who was steering, swung the boat in pursuit.

But nothing happened. I didn’t even see the fish move at the lures – it simply wasn’t interested. Michel said later it was a sailfish, but I saw the complete fish – it was a cruising marlin and by god it was a sight to see.  We took 13 or more small bonitos from that school and, although I wasn’t interested in catching them, it was actually good fun with all four small rods going simultaneously to hard-fighting bonitos. But, disappointingly, no billfish for me once again that day.

I think that I have my eye in now as far as seabirds are concerned. Massive flocks mean tuna; between four and a dozen mean dorado and two or three mean marlin or sailfish. It isn’t terribly scientific you understand, but it is a good enough rule of thumb when you’re out there. The beautiful paille-en-queue, or tropic birds, was particularly good at spotting the fish action from lofty vantage points in the sky. I’d seen tropic birds before in Tobago, but these were a different species. They are one of the prettiest sea-birds you can see it has to be said, with their snow white plumage and long twin plumed tails. The Tobagan birds were red billed tropic birds, but these Mauritian birds had yellow bills and were smaller and more delicate. There is a substantial nesting colony in the Black River national park and once, whilst watching the birds float on the updraft from the high observation point, I saw a peregrine falcon drop like a stone over the edge of the escarpment to tear after one. I didn’t see if it made a kill, but it was a heart-stopping moment.

On my last days fishing, inevitably, I had a thick head from the wine and rum-fuelled barbeque at Benoit’s the previous evening. It blackened further an already black mood. The marlin were proving scarce and that End Of The Week feeling was closing in. Now, the previous week, that was different. They had eight or more marlin in that week. My week though, things were slow with only three on the scales and all of them small fish. We set out anyway, of course, with my head and stomach rolling to the timbre of each wave.

At precisely 8.20 am local time, Big Blue whacked the lure on the starboard outrigger. The outrigger line clip snapped like a gunshot and there was a huge splash behind the boat. We all jumped up and the crew started shouting in Creole. The cry “Mahli, mahli, mahli” was raised as around ten feet of blue, green and gold aggression shot out of the water like a Trident missile. We had hooked our first blue marlin of the week.

And then we hadn’t. One of the million-and-one things that can go wrong when you fish for marlin, suddenly went wrong and the hook came free. Big Blue was gone, but not before she whacked the lure on the opposite outrigger on her way. I fancied it was a show of defiance – you can’t catch me, suckers…

I suspected that she had come off because Michel had missed the strike. When fishing with lures, the skipper must accelerate the boat to set the hook and, because we had all been taken by surprise with the ferocity and suddenness of that strike, he had missed it. But I could have been wrong, what with all the pandemonium, and how could I blame a man who smiled so much? Besides, I've lost count of the number of fish that I've missed in my career. It happens. And that’s fishing.

We shrugged and carried on. Within 10 minutes a big bronze shape appeared behind the lures. Everyone on the boat was shouting and pointing and willing the thing to take but… nothing. Michel swung the boat around and went back over the area. Once again a bronze shape appeared behind the lures and we all started roaring encouraging at it to take a bite. For about 30 seconds it cruised along behind us, a bronze stain in the blue water, and then it changed colour to dark blue, almost black, as its aggression built up. Finally it charged forward, slamming into the lure. Michel gunned the engine to set the hook and we were in. Bruno shouted “Sailfeesh!” - so it wasn’t a marlin, but it was the next best thing.

They got the harness on me, settled me in the fighting chair and I fought my prize. It was strong; Bruno reckoned it was 80 -100 lbs and that’s a respectable sailfish. I had it to within 40ft or so of the boat and the gaffs came out. “No gaffs!” I said. I’m a catch and release man - no-one was killing this fish as long as it was able to swim away with only a sore mouth. There was some debate in Creole and then Bruno said “Ok – we see how she’s hooked”. Fair enough, I nodded agreement and Bruno went off to get the camera.

Then…the line went sickeningly slack as the hook hold gave way and the fish got off.

But that’s the thing about being committed to catch and release - you can get to make up your own rules. For example, I have no official definition of exactly how far away the fish has to be before I release it. This one was rather further away than ideally I would have liked - a long distance release if you will - but I’m counting it as a catch anyway. We teased it, saw it strike, hooked it and fought it. So what if it got away 5 minutes before the intended time? It was a billfish and it was a near-perfect end to a near-perfect week.

The radio crackled into life and Benoit announced that Stoo had caught a marlin, so he was a very happy bunny.

On the way back to port, half a mile and half an hour out, a marlin struck a lure behind another Sportfisher boat which was running about one hundred yards parallel to us. The fish stayed on and they stopped to fight it. One hundred yards away from the dream outcome - a marlin on my way home. The lucky angler had paid a quarter share to join a trip and hadn’t even chartered the boat himself. He got off the boat singing “We are the champions…”

Stoo’s fish was small, only 140lbs or so, and they had killed it. “Child killer” I accused and he looked at his feet sheepishly. “Och, Benoit wanted to christen the new boat for me” he offered in defence. I laughed and he poured the wine. After a few (well, maybe a lot) glasses to say goodbye to everyone, I tottered off to get a shower, check out of my hotel and start the long trip home.

I missed my kids lots and couldn’t wait to see them, but as ever I was sad to go.

It was a great week, spent with great people, on great boats using great gear and fishing in great waters. So what if I hadn’t caught Big Blue – with a decade of salmon fishing behind me, this was child’s play. I could do the time.