Game Fish Diaries - Chic McSherry

I had bought a new fly rod before I went out as I had been told that there was good bone and tarpon fishing to be had. As compensation for the unexpected day off from Kuda, I had arranged with Arnim to go to Friendship Flats to try for bonefish. However, whilst practising with the new rod in the bay below the villa, it snapped cleanly above the first spigot on the very first cast. Bummer.

We tried a makeshift repair using superglue and all sorts, which worked for a while but, inevitably, as soon as I started lengthening line it snapped again. I should have known better than to buy cheap stock. We went fishing anyway and I spent some time wading the flats chucking a spinner around and chatting to Arnim. He proved to be a very intelligent and thoughtful individual who knew a lot about his homeland, and its plants and animals. As well as running the house, he kept down a nightshift job with the environmental agency controlling mosquitoes. He was a most interesting man, if you allowed for his frequent yawns.

That evening, one of the crewmen, Paul, and I went down to the tournament registration, to pay the fees, get the “free” promotional goodies from Carib beer who were the sponsors and hang out with the other anglers. We also got the tags for the tag and release program with the little one-shot cameras to record the catch and get our points. Like I said, there were some serious entrants in the tournament and I couldn’t help but feel a little out of place – it was a club that I didn’t belong to and although people would nod to me, there was no general effort to welcome newcomers in. I guess you have to earn it.

The next morning we were on the boat at 5 am to bait hooks with fresh flying fish on the way out to the fishing grounds. “Lines down” was called at 6 am and we started fishing for real. Our strategy was simple; we intended to target wahoo and dorado for the first 4 hours and then switch to marlin rigs as the day warmed up. So we set up with downriggers and dead-baits as we trolled around the FADs (Fish Aggregating Devices) that had been set out to keep fish in certain areas. The FADs were really no more than groups of floating logs that had been anchored in one place so that they would not drift away on the current and were marked by small flags. Everyone knew where they were so most boats made a pass or two on the way to and from the main fishing area, called the Corner Pocket. It’s usually Wahoo City around the FADs and it was rare to make a pass without a strike.

The rules state that you have to radio in your fish the moment you hook-up in order to get any points for it, and at around 7 am the radio burst into life with one lucky angler already into a blue marlin - the first of the tournament.

Our carefully thought out strategy went in the bin and with an instant tactic change we headed “outside” and rigged up for marlin on the surface.

Marlin often hit or spear their prey with their bills to stun it before turning and eating it, so that when a fish strikes, the lines burst from their clips on the outriggers (basically a long pole sticking out from each side of the boat) and the reel screams as the fish runs. If the fish doesn’t hook itself and the reel falls silent after the strike, the angler lets the drag run free so that the bait floats as if it’s stunned. Often as not, the marlin will turn and take it again.

Then comes the tricky bit. The angler has to count slowly to 5 before tightening up the drag and striking – the longest 5 seconds of his life. This is called “drop-back” and I was terrified I’d get it wrong. To complicate things, we were pulling plastic lures as well as baits and these require the boat to be accelerated immediately on a strike in order to set the hook properly. This meant that we had to watch the lures and rods all the time to be ready to react in precisely the right way. Stress.

To attract the fish to the boat, and therefore the lures or bait, we also pulled teasers. These are devices that spin, splash, flash, dive, bubble and generally create interest in predators. When you get a strike, all the other lines and all the teasers must be brought into the boat so that you don’t foul or tangle them. It is sheer mayhem for the first 5 or 10 minutes until everyone settles down.

At just before 8 am, I was peeling a beautifully ripe mango for my breakfast when one of the outrigger clips snapped and the rod on the port bow bucked over with its reel screaming.

Everyone dived for the other rods and I got into the fighting chair, gripping the rod like a vice with my left hand. Most fighting chairs on sport boats are permanently fixed to the floor but the one on Kuda was free-standing; a bit like a dinner chair with a gimbal to hold the rod just below the cushion and between my legs. I had viewed it with some suspicion when I saw it at first and now it was time to put it to the full test. The locals fight their fish standing up and I had tried this on the first practise day against a big wahoo but I couldn’t get my balance, what with the sea rolling around and so forth, so I wanted to use the chair. The moment of truth had arrived.
I looked out over the sea and my stomach fluttered as I saw a beautiful blue, gold and green torpedo of about six feet in length shoot out of the water around 20 yards behind the boat. It was a billfish; my first blue marlin.

I’ve never consciously eaten copper, but I am as sure as I can be that the taste that was in my mouth could only be described as coppery. Around me there was a frantic buzz of activity as the other lines were brought in and I heard Dave radio in the hookup.

The battle was on and I was now on my own because, under tournament rules, only the angler must touch the rod and line for the fish to qualify. The sheer power and speed of these fish is impossible to describe. I think only other billfish anglers would really understand. I used to have a doberman bitch called Tara and occasionally she would nearly pull me clean off my feet when she saw a cat or a rabbit whilst we were out for a walk. If she’d been attached to a reel with the drag set at, say, 30lbs rather than her short dog lead, I think that might equate to how a marlin run feels. Only marlin are faster. Much faster, and some people say that they can travel at up to 70 mph. Mind you, in a more rational moment and by applying my schoolboy physics, it is possible to deduce that had my marlin been travelling at 70mph it would have shot some 225 feet into the air in the first second that it was airborne (do the maths yourself). Who am I to argue though; it felt more like it was doing 90.

Normally I would have worn a shoulder harness to alleviate the pressure on my arms and allow the fight to be conducted safely and properly, but we were all caught napping by the suddenness of this strike so there had been no time for me to get into it. And besides, I was now so nervous that I’d do something wrong and lose the fish, that I just gritted my teeth and fought on. My left arm felt like lead. When the fish pulled and ran, I just held on tight and let it work itself out against the drag on the reel. When it stopped, I pumped the rod up in a short smooth action and wound in line on the downward stroke.

I’d read that short pumping strokes were more effective at bothering and beating the fish so that was what I tried to do. What I hadn’t appreciated, however, was that I would have to pump the rod hundreds (felt like thousands) of times. Sometimes I only gained an inch, other times the fish turned and ran straight at me and I had to wind like mad. If I flagged, Dave helped out by accelerating the boat slightly. The boat is as big a part of the fight as the angler and it takes a really skillful captain to keep the pressure on the marlin and help the angler by backing up, changing direction, flicking to neutral or racing forward as required. Dave was reading the fish’s mind. I was just getting on with the job.

Eventually, the fish was beaten and with cries of “Wine, wine, wine, wine, wine” from the crew I wound the reel frantically to bring the fish alongside the boat. Now came the difficult bit, and it’s also not without some real risk to limbs; anglers and crew have even been killed at this point by fish leaping into the boat, so it’s not rushed or taken lightly. First one of the crew, in this case a guy called Kastar, grabbed the leader (a length of heavy nylon of about 300lbs breaking strain connecting the hook to the main 50 lb test fishing line). He wrapped the line round his hand once so that he could draw the fish in and grip it by the bill to hopefully calm it down. Then, Dave, jabbed a tag into the fish to record its capture whilst the deckhand, Paul, took a photo to prove to the judges that we had caught it.

The fish, unsurprisingly, was not too happy about this treatment and jumped hard at Kastar. A marlin’s bill is very rough and Kastar had forgotten to wear his gloves. The fish got wilder so, discretion being the best option, he released it right there and then. Dave immediately turned to Paul and asked him about fourteen times if he had taken the pictures. Paul guaranteed that he had taken at least three.

In all the melee they had quite forgotten all about me and the only clear view I got of my marlin was watching it slowly sail off down the swell and, with a flick of its huge tail, it was gone into the depths.

But I’d done it - my first blue. It was the 27th of April, and, spookily, it was also my brother’s birthday, but I was willing to bet that he wasn’t having nearly as good a day as I was.

A beer tastes like nectar after you catch a billfish. No other taste like it in the world, I guarantee. Even at 9.00am in the morning. I reckoned that it had taken me 20 minutes to subdue the fish, but Dave told me later that it was more like 45. I was sceptical about that, rightly so in hindsight as I now know how it feels to fight a fish for that length of time, but I wasn’t going to argue the point. Besides, I was so excited that I hardly remember the details at all, apart from that first leap from the marlin. It’s burned onto the back of my retina.

The muscles in my left arm ached unbelievably, more because of the nervous tension than the workload because at an estimated 60lbs, my fish was a mere minnow in the scheme of things. But I’d caught a marlin – oh yes; I’d caught a marlin! Kastar later told me that the smaller ones are always wild when they are brought to the boat. The big guys tend to give up easier at the end, but take longer to fight obviously.

Although we trolled until lines up at 4 pm, that was our only strike of the day. At the weigh-in back at Pigeon Point, I handed in the one-shot camera and tag form to the officials and was just in time to see a marlin brought to the scale that weighed 644lbs. This fish was a new record for Tobagan waters so that was clearly the boat to beat.

Dave Moore is ex-army as well as being an ex-Tobagan national football player. The ex-army bit was showing strongly on the second day of the tournament. Paul, the deckhand, was really getting the rough edge of Dave’s tongue. Paul was 20 years old and had an attitude problem, so he didn’t help his case much. The reason for Dave’s manner that morning was that the instant “lines down” was called, we were into fish. The first was a blackfin tuna, which unfortunately didn't count for points in the tournament, but it was one seriously tough fish that felt like three times its estimated 20lbs.

The next strike came from a wahoo, which was too small to be entered in the competition, but was welcome as food nonetheless. Next up was a bigger wahoo, which turned on the line and with its razor-teeth, severed it cleanly. You fish with a long wire trace when targeting wahoo, but they can still turn on the nylon and cut it clean off. The next wahoo to hit was a real cracker. I was getting more experienced so I knew right off that it was a big one. I fought it for ages before getting it to the boat but Paul, remember him, didn’t grab the leader to control the fish and simply lunged for it with the gaff. The line, inevitably, broke. Dave was not a happy boy; points meant prizes after all.

So, later that morning, when Dave yelled “Leef de rod! Leef de rod!” I jumped to it, lifted the rod and stuck into something reminiscent of a brick wall; but this brick wall took off at a frantic speed in the opposite direction. It felt like another blue marlin. I’d just gotten in the chair when, sickeningly, everything went slack. The worst feeling in the world.

Was it me? Did I mess up when I’d struck? He’d come off in any event. I stood up and put the rod in the holder thinking that maybe the bait had been dropped and, just then, the rod next to me bent double as another fish struck. It ran and ran and ran and line simply poured off the screaming reel. I sat in the chair holding onto the rod, nervously waiting for the fish to settle down and for the crew to get the other lines in. I kept repeating to myself “Relax and stay calm, just hold the rod up and wait”. It didn’t work; my arm ached with tension from the start.

Paul had jammed a reel and had a tangle. I thought Dave would have a heart attack as he screamed at him to pull the line in by hand and clear the deck area so we could fight the fish. This fish, at around 100lbs, was a bit larger than my first though was still only small by blue marlin standards. But it fought and fought and fought. I would get it to the boat and it would tear off again, jumping and tailwalking and greyhounding through the waves. It treated me to the magnificent, and unforgettable, sight of it rearing out of the water and thrashing its bill from side to side in naked aggression, apparently directed straight at me. I finally got it to within leadering distance only to have it dive for the ocean floor, almost taking me with it, or so it felt. I had to climb into the harness halfway through the fight because I was getting numb in my left arm and sweating heavily from the effort. The harness made life a lot easier as I could use my body weight and relax my poor left arm.

A moment of sheer panic occurred as the fish started to weaken for the second time. The handle on the Shimano reel started turning without moving the reel drum. This time it was me who was shouting at the crew and we discovered that I had to pull the handle out from the reel at the same time as winding it as fast as I could to recover any line.

Eventually, despite all the drama, the fish was beaten and Kastar wrapped the leader whilst Dave grabbed its bill to calm it down. Kastar then tagged it and Paul took the photos but this time they remembered me and Dave lifted the fish onto the transom of the boat so that I could get a couple of pictures with it using my own camera. After that, it was slid back to swim dazedly off.

Dave later showed me his hands which were rubbed raw from the marlin’s bill and a huge bruise and blackened nail adorned one of his fingers where the fish had bashed him as he lifted it onto the transom of the boat. He told me that he was determined to get me my photo and didn’t trust the crew after the previous day. What a guy.

When we examined the line we’d hooked the first fish on, we discovered that the leader had been roughened, probably by another marlins bill, just where it snapped. The theory later expounded by the crew was that the second fish had run across the leader in its eagerness to get at the other bait and had cut the line cleanly with its bill, thereby freeing the first fish.

Two blue marlin, one each day. Could it get any better? Not for Paul it seemed. When we returned to the weigh-in, I was given the bad news that the photos from the previous day didn’t count for points because it was impossible to identify the fish from the one and only picture that had turned out. It seemed that Paul had had his hand over the lense whilst he took the photos. Dave was apoplectic. You see, up to that point we were lying somewhere in the top five and with a big cash prize for the top boat, you can see why he was so keen. I could only pray that day’s pictures were better and that the photos we also took with my SLR camera would come out. Memories only go so far – everyone back home would demand photographic evidence.

Happily, we discovered the next day that the second pictures were perfect so we were now in the hunt with a total of 350 points and were lying 7th in the tournament overall at that time. We could have been 4th with a proper picture of that first fish, but them’s the breaks I suppose.

That day was called a lay-over day and all the boats and crew got together on the beach at Pigeon Point to have a beach cook-out and party. There was live music, games and competitions, but mostly there was consumption of vast quantities of beer and rum punches. This, we hoped, would be in our favour because we sensibly left the party early to go get some fresh bait for the next days fishing, leaving things in full swing and getting wilder by the minute.
True to form though, Paul had decided to stay and party on - so we had to wonder if he would make the dockside by the required 5 am the next morning. On the way to the beach party, and also on the way back, we pulled some small lures and caught a couple of bonito tuna. Dave rigged one up immediately for barracuda. This is pretty normal tactics, until I explain that he rigged it on a hand line. I’ve caught barracuda in Florida; they’re fast and vicious and there is no way that I’d like to have one connected directly to my hand. I understood then why Dave has so many scars.

I had struggled a bit at the party because I just couldn’t get the swing of the accent. They, in turn, struggled with my accent so it was hard to fully participate in all the fishing talk. Mind you, like fishermen the world over, the tales were always about the fish that got away and not about the ones that were landed or tagged. The one about the fight that lasted 5 hours only to have the fish spool them (took all the line off the reel in one run) whilst the boat chased it; or the huge marlin caught on 30lb test line that broke off at the boat because the angler panicked and rubbed the leader on the transom. All that good stuff and Dave and my crew gave out as good as we got. Our lost blue marlin gained 50lb every time the tale was told and how Dave knew it was a female was a mystery to me. He even started to speculate that it was the mother of the one that we did catch and the little one had somehow deliberately freed her before grabbing the bait that caught it. Rum’s an amazing spirit. In truth, none of us actually saw the beast, but it was all part of the general tournament banter and was really good fun.

I had mixed feelings about the last day. Dave was mad keen to get as high up in the tournament as possible and the only way to do that was to bring a marlin to the scales to have it weighed. Naturally, the marlin would be dead by then and that wasn’t in my plans at all. We compromised; if the marlin was definitely a record-breaker of at least 650lbs or more, he could take it. After all, with a cash prize of $50000 and a brand new car, it meant a lot to a guy who earned a lot less than the minimum wage in the UK.

Predictably, but unfortunately, Paul didn’t show at the jetty. We were all up early so that we could get to the hotspots first, but we wasted over half an hour waiting for him and then had to leave. He wasn’t great, but he was an extra pair of hands and if we got into a big fish we’d need all the help we could get. We headed out anyway and on the way picked up a small wahoo. Dave and Kastar decided that we would fish well outside the reefs and inshore waters over an upwelling in the sea floor. We went out almost 15 miles over pretty lifeless sea. Then we started to see schools of small flying fish, the babies amongst them looking for all the world like big dragonflies. It was a really pretty sight.

The flying fish got bigger the further we went out and we began to get tense with anticipation - where there’s bait, there’s usually a predator. Dave was up on the bow and suddenly shouted “Mahli, mahli, mahli!” (that’s marlin, marlin, marlin to non-anglers) and Kastar swung the boat in pursuit. I saw the splash and the bronze shape under the water with a fin cutting the waves. My heart leapt, but, alas, as we got closer we saw lots of bronze shapes and fins. It was a school of dolphin which joined us and played in the boat’s bow wave. Both marlin and dolphin look bronze in the sea whilst shark look blue; not a lot of people know that.

Birds are amazing things. There we were, 15 miles offshore in the middle of featureless sea and out of nowhere a flock of sea-birds materialised and started to feed on baitfish driven to the surface by a school of albacore tuna below them. But then, the hand of nature is never random. The small petrels and fulmers usually find the schools of bait first and they do it by smell, believe it or not. They are classed, generally, as “tube-bills” because of the small tube on the top of their beaks. This concentrates the air-flow onto a receptor at the back of the bill area which can detect minute quantities of scent on the sea breeze. When predators like marlin, tuna or shark hit baitfish, there is a lot of fish oil released. You can actually see it on the water in a slick. The tube-bills pick up the scent of this as well as things like, amazingly, the scent of the gas given off by sea-weed being grazed by shrimps. The larger booby birds (gannets) follow the petrels whilst the frigates use their eyesight by flying high above it all and zooming in on any activity. I love watching frigate birds and it is incredible to realise that although they are true sea-birds, their plumage is not waterproof and they do not have webbed feet. They can’t actually land on water at all and simply pick up scraps from the surface or mug other birds until they drop their catch.
But back to the tournament…albacore are not point earners so we didn’t waste any time on them, just long enough to make sure that there weren’t any yellowfin tuna or marlin shadowing the school, and then we left the birds to their feast.

For the rest of the day, we trolled and trolled and trolled. We changed baits. We blessed the water with beer. We prayed. We made Captain Dave jump when he fell asleep by letting the drag run on the reel to make it scream as if a fish had taken. Nothing, nowt, nada. There are two schools of thought in marlin fishing; one is that the best time is around the full moon and the other is that the worst time is around the full moon. The previous night was a full moon so the Tobagan marlin seem to follow the latter school of thought. Possibly, they feed all night long in the moonlight so are less keen on the baits during daylight hours. But who knows.

Lines up was called at 3 pm and then there was the usual embarrassment surrounding the tips for Dave and Kastar. It’s a British problem; we just don’t know how to tip properly and we always vex over it. Is it too much, is it too little, how to pass it over graciously, etc. etc. Anyway, it was done and we were off to the awards dinner by 7pm to see how we’d done.

At the dinner, we discovered that Paul had picked an argument with the wrong guy at the beach party and had been laid out cold with one punch. He spent the night in casualty.

It was probably just as well because I think the rest of us would have put him in hospital ourselves when we discovered that we’d have been 5th if that first photo had counted. The guys would have got some cash and some beer and I’d have a little teak desk trophy that would have had pride of place in my office. As it was, we finished joint 10th (with a few others) out of 37 entrants. Not bad for an amateur.

So that was that; been there, done that and am the proud owner of the t-shirt. Would I fish in a tournament again? Yes, I think I would - not for the competition or the ego thing – more for the fact that it is a forum to learn lots of new things from people who are like-minded.  I might never be in their league or own my own boat, but I do like to earn my place in the sun.

And to do that, you need to put up with a few blisters.

Footnote:

I met a guy from Edinburgh called Stoo Williamson whilst I was fishing in Mauritius. I bragged so much about how great the Tobago tournament was that he entered it himself in April 2000. He was fishing on board a boat called Hard Play II and he only went and won the whole shebang with a total catch of 5 marlin!!!!