“Fish On! Fish On!”
It was a delightful early November morning. We were a few hours south of the Gulf Stream, 400 miles and two days out of Newport, Rhode Island, delivering Schatz Sea, a 54-foot Southerly cutter, south to St. Martin. Bermuda was still 250 miles and 36 hours ahead. We’d outrun the northerly gale, and now the wind was light with flat seas and blue skies. We were motoring.
At daybreak, the professional skipper aboard Schatz Sea and I had set out our fishing rigs. He was using a yo-yo, with the line attached to the leader and a plug. I’d set up a rod and reel with a day-glow squid on a 10-foot wire leader. Mid-morning, I was in the cockpit alone. The skipper and the boat’s owners were below having brunch. Off to port, my eye caught a splash. Black tails flashed above the surface. It could be only one thing on this flat sea: a school of tuna working a bait ball on the surface.
Bluefin tuna can be more than 300 pounds, far too big for our gear, and way too big to land on a small sailboat.
“A school of fish is out here!” I shouted down the companionway. Everybody raced up.
Then, it happened. The reel on the rod on the aft pushpit began to sing. I dashed aft, flipped off the clicker, tightened the drag, and began to reel in the line.
This was a big fish. I lifted the pole out of the bracket and placed the butt in my groin—delicately. Now, I could pump, lower the pole and wind in slack. Pump, reel, pump, reel. The crew gathered around. The skipper hauled his line on the yo-yo. No sense dealing with two fish. This one would be enough.
“Will someone put the boat in neutral?” I asked. “We’ll never get this fish aboard going at this speed.”
I was having a ball, pumping and reeling, the fish taking off on a run, stripping line. Then I realized this should be the boat owner’s opportunity. It was his pole.
“Here,” I told him. “Take this. It’s your fish.”
My first paid job at sea was as the mate on a sport-fishing boat out of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. I was 24 and had just left college. My job was to keep the boat clean. Each morning, as we sped south to the Dumping Ground seeking swordfish, I made up the trawls: a string of three squid on a 10-foot stainless steel wire leader, with a hook embedded in each squid. We deployed four lines: two off the stern, port and starboard, with two more from the outriggers.
Men paid a lot of money to spend the day aboard Gladiator, our 36-foot sport-fishing yacht. If a fish hit a line attached to one of the outriggers, you could hear the clip snap. That gave me enough time to set up the reel and get one of the paying guests into the fighting chair. I’d set the butt of the pole in a cup in the chair between his legs, the reel squealing as the fish stripped off line. I would also strap a harness around the guest’s back and clip it to the reel.
The guy was always in for a fight of a lifetime. Pump, reel, pump, reel, tighten the brake. We could fight that fish all afternoon, or so it seemed, but it was rarely more than 20 minutes. The fish would leap 5 or 10 feet into the air, trying to shake the hook. The fight would wear out both fish and man.
Back on Schatz Sea, similar drama was getting intense. After 15 minutes of fighting that fish, the boat’s owner managed to bring the line and the fish up to the stern. It was a yellowfin tuna, 20 pounds or more and still full of fight.
The skipper got hold of the leader, and I passed him a length of cord to create a lasso around the wire, which he slipped down over the fish to take up as a tail rope. The boat’s owner could relax now; the fish wasn’t getting away.
We hauled it onto the aft deck, and a drizzle of rum in the gills quieted it down immediately. Now, we could get on with the job of dressing our fish for dinner. We were still dining on that tuna four days later in Bermuda.
Offshore, from the Gulf Stream south to the islands, I always drag a fishing line or two astern. The voyage can take a couple weeks. Fishing passes the time and lands fresh food for the table. Sailing along at less than 8 knots, there’s a good chance we’ll catch something: yellowfin tuna, mahi-mahi, wahoo.
Rod and reel or a yo-yo makes little difference. While a yo-yo is a great deal cheaper to acquire, a good offshore rod and reel make for a lot more fun as you fight a fish. Sailors on an offshore delivery are fishing for dinner, so keep it as simple as possible.
An offshore rod-and-reel combo can set you back $1,000, but $400 or even a used rig at $200 will do just fine. You could spend more at the store buying fish.
A simple yo-yo reel is all you need to get started, and a pair of leather gloves. You’ll be hauling in your dinner, hand over hand. Buy a reel of 80-pound test monofilament line. To that, add 20 feet of 100-pound test stainless steel leader wire, a package of colorful squid-looking lures, a package of 11/0 hooks, a half dozen 2-ounce lead barrel weights, a handful of swivel clips and a 6-foot length of shock cord.
You’ll need wire cutters and pliers, but a standard multitool should do. Oh, and buy extra line, hooks, wire and lures, as you’ll be losing a few underway.
To make up a trawl, snip off 10 feet of wire, enough to reach from the deck to the water when standing at the stern. You’ll need this because if you attempt to lift a 15-pound fish out of the water by the leader, the hook is likely to break free, and you’ll lose your fish. Keep the fish in the water and bring it aboard with a net or gaff. Better yet, lift the fish out with a tail rope.
At one end of the wire, create an eye or loop. Bending and tying a loop or eye in the end of a wire takes some skill, but you’ll get the hang of it. After creating an eye, twist the bitter end of the wire around the stranding end a half dozen times, and then bend the loose end back and forth with pliers until it snaps off. This creates a smooth finish so the eye won’t snag your hand. This eye will be attached to a swivel clip at the end of the monofilament line.
Feed the other end of the wire through the head of the lure, through one of the weights, and tuck the weight into the head of the lure. Attach the bitter end to the hook with a similar eye as before. This system is adequate for most of the fish you’ll want to catch when underway: 10 to 20 pounds of fish.
To troll, run out enough line so the lure rides far enough aft to be out of the boat’s wake turbulence. If you are using a rod and reel, secure the setup to the yacht with a safety line. Set the rod in a pole bracket on the aft rail. Adjust the drag on the reel so it strips line with a 5-pound pull. Make sure the clicker is on so you’ll hear the reel when a fish hits.
If you’re using a yo-yo, let out adequate line, tie the reel of the aft rail, make a loop knot in the line, and secure it to one end of the shock cord. Tie the other end to the rail. Let out enough slack line so the shock cord takes up the strain on the fishing line astern. This gives the line enough slack so the hook has time to set.
Gloves will be handy. So will a net, a gaff or a tail rope that can be clipped around the leader and worked down and around the fish to snug up around its tail.
If the fish is still full of life, drag it by the tail for a while. If you get a fish aboard and it’s flopping around, pour a dram of rum into its gills, and it’ll quiet down. A sharp fillet knife will come in handy for dressing out your catch. This is a bloody operation, so buckets of seawater will be needed to sluice off the deck.
