"MODERN" SPORT FISHING: I DON'T SEE THE POINT

 

Sometimes it seems that I’m the only person I know who doesn’t spend their free time watching YouTube and similar videos.

As entertaining or informative as such videos can supposedly be, I don’t have the time to watch them unwind, particularly when the host spends too much time concentrating on product endorsements and self-promotion, and far too little on meaningful information.  When I want to learn something, I still prefer the brevity, clarity, and convenience of the well-written word.

But sometimes I end up in a doctor’s waiting room or an auto repair shop or somewhere else where it’s too noisy or too awkward to read and I need to kill time, so like just about everyone else within cell tower range I pull out my phone, check email and the news, and end up scrolling through someone’s fatuous media posts while waiting for my name to be called.

That’s when I can end up scanning fishing videos, and if what I see there represents the “modern” approach to recreational fishing, I’m happy that I’m hardcore old school, because a lot of what I see doesn’t look like much fun at all.  I’m not even sure why someone who’s not in the fish-selling business would even bother to do it.

Many of the videos that I’m talking about fall into the broad category of deep-dropping with electric reels.

They tend to open with a shot of a bent-over rod, the tip maybe bouncing a bit, still stuck in a holder, accompanied by a lot of breathless dialogue about the “big fish” that’s being winched to the surface by an electric reel, which is dutifully grinding away in the foreground, while the supposed fishermen speculate about what might have taken the bait—which usually turns out to be either a tilefish or some kind of grouper, although deep-water snappers and various exotics sometimes make a cameo appearance.

The last video of that sort that I happened to view starred a warsaw grouper that slowly emerged from the depths displaying signs of severe barotrauma, with bulging eyes and a bloated swim bladder that testified to the difference between the pressure at the surface and that which prevailed 1,000 feet below.  

I suppose, if they were sentient, the reel and the rail of the boat would have been very proud of the role that they played in vanquishing the decent-sized grouper, although given all the hooting and self-congratulations coming from the people on board the boat, one would almost think that they played some meaningful role in the fish’s capture, outside of baiting the hook (at least they haven’t yet figured out how to automate that part of the process) and pressing whatever button or throwing whatever lever was necessary for the reel to do its work.

In truth, I wasn’t quite sure what they were hooting about. Spending a very substantial amount of money on a boat, engines, and related equipment, along with the ongoing expenses of dockage, insurance, maintenance, and fuel, just to go out on a vast and often unfriendly ocean to watch your reel catch a fish, seems like a strange way to waste cash.  

It would be quite a bit cheaper, in both money and time, to just buy the grouper at a local market, at which point the folks in the video could have had their fish without needing to deal with the spray and the slime and the sunburn, and could then have spent all their time and money playing video games that didn’t involve any physical exertion—which, in the end, was just about all that their supposed fishing expedition amounted to.

Most of the other videos also fall into the “letting the boat catch the fish” category, although they at least leave out the electric reels.

Almost always, large pelagic fish are involved.  Most often, they’re giant bluefin tuna, although yellowfin tuna, bigeye tuna and, for some reason, wahoo also appear.  These videos typically depict the alleged recreational fisherman standing in the cockpit of a boat, next to a heavy, bent-butt trolling rod that, as in the case of the electric reel shots, remains firmly seated in a rod holder.  The rod bends with the weight of a hooked fish, and as the boat and the rod holder struggle mightily against the strength and the mass of their struggling opponent, the “angler” continues to stand there, taking whatever opportunity arises to crank in a little line, often pulling it down toward the reel with his other hand.  Eventually, the fish weakens enough to be cranked to the boat, at which point it is inevitably dispatched, typically with a harpoon.

Such behavior wouldn’t be remarkable if performed by a commercial fisherman.  After all, a commercial fisherman’s job is to put valuable fish in the boat, so that they might be sold to support the fisherman and the fisherman’s family.  To accomplish that job, a commercial fisherman will employ any and all legal means that might help to get the job done—and rightfully so, because the more quickly and efficiently such fisherman can fill up the boat and offload at the local buyer, the more profitable the trip will be.

But recreational fishing isn’t about efficiency or profit, it’s about recreation (if you think you’re a recreational fisherman, but sell any part of your catch, you’ve been mislabeling yourself, for the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in federal marine waters, defines recreational fishing as

“fishing for sport or pleasure,”

and commercial fishing as

“fishing in which the fish harvested, either in whole or in part, are intended to enter commerce or enter commerce through sale, barter or trade,”

so if you sell even a few of your fish, you clearly fall into the commercial category.) 

Recreational fishing for large pelagic fish is about pitting the angler’s endurance, strength, and skill against the weight and strength of the fish.  Ernest Hemingway once described fighting a giant bluefin as

“a back-sickening, sinew-straining, man-sized job even with a rod that looks like a hoe handle.  But if you land a big tuna after a six-hour fight, fight him man against fish until your muscles are nauseated with the unceasing strain, and finally bring him up alongside the boat, green-blue and silver in the lazy ocean, you will be purified and will be able to enter unabashed into the presence of the very elder gods, and they will make you welcome.”

The supposed recreational fisherman who never takes the rod from the holder denies themselves such experience, and certainly earns the old gods’ scorn.

Why they would record themselves taking such ignoble actions, and post them online for all to see, is something that I can’t comprehend.

And then we have the videos that combine the worst of both worlds, fighting a great gamefish from the rod holder—with an electric reel.

The broadbill swordfish has long been seen as the ultimate catch for a blue water angler.  That was particularly true in the past, before longer-ranged boats equipped with cutting edge electronics opened up new ways to find them.  Traditionally, the only way to hook a sword was to find one “finning out” on the surface of the sea, and then try to present a bait.

That wasn’t easy. 

A 1958 article in Sports Illustrated magazine described swordfishing this way:

“To meet a swordfish in combat a man must spend long days on a bright and shimmering sea, searching until his eyes burn for two black fins which tell him a swordfish, belly heavy with squids and fishes, has surfaced to sun and rest.  He faces the disheartening fact that a satiated swordfish will more often than not disdain his bait, and that he will have to hunt on.  And, if at the end of some exhausting hunt a man hooks a swordfish, he must be ready for hours of punishing battle.  A swordfish will not often run with the speed of a tuna or jump with the frenzy of a marlin, though he can and may do both.  He fights deep and with unbelievable determination.  And, to compound the unique physical and emotional stresses of swordfishing, the angler knows that his broadbill is very likely foul-hooked or snarled in the cable leader and may escape, and that even if he is fairly hooked in the mouth his jawbone is so fragile that the hook might pull out at any moment…

“It was not until 1913, in fact, that the swordfish fell victim to a sporting angler and thus formally entered the ranks of the world’s great game fish.  And the man who caught him, William C. Boschen, even today is a legendary figure…

“Boschen took the world’s first broadbill on rod and reel.  It weighed 355 pounds.  He had fought it for an hour and a half with nothing but a rod belt, and his line tested only 42 pounds.”

Since then, anglers have learned that they could be much more successful by abandoning the search for swords on the surface, and instead drifting baits at various depths near the edge of the continental shelf at night.  That technique was pioneered in Florida, as recreational fisherman began copying a method long employed by Cuban small-boat commercial fisherman (Santiago, the Cuban fisherman created by Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea, was fishing in that manner when he hooked his great blue marlin), and has since spread all along coast.

More recently, recreational fishermen have begun deep-dropping baits for swordfish during the day, drifting them near the edges of submarine canyons and over humps and bottom structure 1,000 feet and more beneath the surface.

The new approaches to swordfishing have proven much more effective than presenting baits to finning fish.  Where the Sports Illustrated article noted that

“In the almost half-century of big-game fishing since 1913, fewer than 750 broadbill have been taken by barely 200 men and women,”

National Marine Fisheries Service data suggests that recreational fishermen on the Atlantic Coast of the United States landed over 6,300 swordfish in 2023 alone, although that figure is subject to substantial uncertainty.  It is not only the numbers of today’s recreationally-landed swordfish that contrast sharply with those caught in the past, but also their size.  While the fish baited on the surface tended to be large, rarely weighing less than 200 pounds, the average weight of recreationally-landed swordfish in 2023 was a mere 70.8 pounds; given that a fair number of triple-digit swords are still encountered, that low average suggests that many truly small fish are also being killed.

But it’s not so much the size of the swordfish being killed that’s disturbing—although that, too, seems somehow wrong—as how so many of those fish are caught.  Because of the great depths involved, and the heavy weights needed to get baits down to the fish—and because too many of today’s anglers are lazy, and just want a dead fish for their media feeds, while putting in as little effort as possible to earn it—deep-drop swordfishermen have, for the most part, adopted electric reels.  While some do it the right way, using the motor only to reel in heavy weights and empty hooks, while fighting a fish in the traditional manner, others use reels that don’t even provide an opportunity for hand-cranking.

And, to further insult their quarry, such fishermen typically don’t even deign to pick up the rod when a swordfish strikes, instead leaving the rod in its holder while using the reel’s motor to winch the fish to the surface, as if it was a crab pot or maybe an anchor instead of the greatest blue water gamefish of them all.

That’s how they do things these days, but I have to admit that such modern forms of angling leave me cold.

I have been fishing blue water for over forty-five years, and in all that time, I have never caught a swordfish, although I’ve seen a few finning out.

I’ve also never used an electric reel, and never left a rod in the holder after the strike.

I still hope to catch a swordfish one day.  I hope to be out on the edge this season, dropping down baits, waiting for that one special take.  If and when the bite comes, I will fight the fish from a belt and harness, however long that may take, and the only way line will come back on my reel is if I turn the handle with the strength of my arm and put it there.

Having said that, I realize that I’m no longer young—or even middle-aged, and I very well might lose the race with time.  Before I get a chance to pit myself against a quality sword, I may no longer be up to the challenge of fighting the fish.

And if that’s how things work out, so be it.

I won’t dishonor the fish—or myself—with an electric reel or a rod that stays in its holder. 

I see no point in catching my fish the modern, mechanically assisted way. If I can’t pay for my big fish with cramps and sore muscles, with blisters and bruises from fights that, on occasion, tear the skin from my palms and leave me almost too weak to stand, I’d rather not have them at all.