I started fishing when I was very
young, catching a bergall (more properly, “cunner”) not much after my second
birthday, and used the tip section of a cane pole to wreak havoc among the
snapper blue population not too long after that.
Back then, as
I noted in last Thursday’s post, salt water fishing was much different than it
is today. Not only were the boats
and equipment much cruder than they were today, but anglers had a very
different attitude toward the fish. The
sort of fishing my family did at the time—essentially, sinker-bouncing for
winter flounder and anything else that happened to bite—was a very blue-collar
affair, with most of the anglers hoping to bring home “free” fish to augment whatever
they bought at the grocery store.
At the same time, recreational
fishing was a lower-key effort than it is today. People went out a little way from the harbor—or
sometimes anchored up inside—picked a spot that looked good and dropped down
their baits, hoping that they would be “lucky.”
Most of the anglers labored at physically challenging jobs during the
week, as plumbers, carpenters, masons, and such—my father reupholstered furniture—and
looked at their time on the water as a chance to relax, spend time with family
and/or friends, maybe drink a couple of beers and forget about work for a
while.
They didn’t work all that hard at
catching fish. It was a time before outboard
fishing boats were rigged with electronics suites that would have been the envy
of a Second World War destroyer captain, and it’s not at all clear that my father,
or the anglers he knew at the time, would have used depthfinders, GPS and such
even if it had been available. I still
remember my father getting annoyed with me when I was 12 or so years old, and
had started trying to do things that I read about in the fishing magazines, because
I was trying to be “too scientific” when I fished, and was taking all the fun
out of his time on the water.
The magazines that I read were
also much different than those of today (besides the obvious fact that they
were all printed on paper and came in the mail, rather than being delivered
electronically). Back then, the writers
told stories. Sometimes, they were
stories about far-away places. Sometimes
they talked about a new lure, or new way to fish, or just how to better apply
the things and the knowledge you had. And
sometimes—and I have to admit that, even then, these were my favorite tales of
all—they spoke of epic fights with fish that weighed hundreds of pounds, fights
that lasted for hours and took place far from shore, and often ended up with
the angler defeated and the fish swimming away.
Looking back, some of those
stories were a little corny, crediting the fish with a craft and intelligence beyond
anything that was remotely real. But the
one thing that they almost universally conveyed was a respect for the fish that
we sought. Small fish like flounder were
described in familiar, almost friendly terms, while larger species—and by
larger, I mean anything from a striped bass to a black marlin—were treated more
heroically, as worthy foes, to be fought honorably, regardless of outcome.
No question, the writers of the
day laid it on a little thick. Still, no
sport fisherman worthy of the name would be caught dead with a harpoon. Only the commercial boats carried those. Particularly among the offshore fleet, there
were ethics, and things that just weren’t done.
That’s no longer the case, and I’ve written
about it before. I’m only returning to
the topic because of a couple of articles that recently appeared in the angling
press. One of them actively ridiculed
notions of ethics and sport; what was perhaps more offensive is that both tossed
jabs at anglers who maintained their own ethical code, and seemed to encourage
anglers to make catching a fish, by any means necessary, the singular goal of
the recreational fisherman.
I don’t want to suggest that
there’ anything wrong with using eels for striped bass. I know quite a few very good surfcasters, who
have taken some very large fish from the beach, and as far as I know, every one
of them will toss an eel when conditions are right. But that doesn’t mean that other anglers can’t
set higher standards, intentionally sticking to artificial lures, and perhaps
going fishless on nights when eels are putting bass on the sand. The fact that the article seemed to look down
on such anglers as “purists” who are somehow foolish, or otherwise flawed, for
not fishing eels when their plugs go untouched was a little offensive; we’re
talking about sportfishing, after all, and challenge is the
essence of sport.
Mirriam-Webster goes so
far as to define a “sportsman” as
“a person considered with respect to
living up to the ideals of sportsmanship,”
while defining “sportsmanship”
as
“conduct (such as fairness, respect for
one’s opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing) becoming to one participating
in a sport.”
It’s not hard to believe that an angler
who intentionally handicaps themselves with artificial lures rather than
choosing to use a more productive eel or other live bait is a living example of
both definitions, and is, at the least, entitled to respect rather than
derision.
To put things in perspective, the
“big fish” that the article is referring to are bluefin tuna that include “some
well over 200 pounds.” That might sound
like a big fish to someone used to catching largemouth bass and brown trout,
but in a blue-water context, a 200 pound fish is not all that large. A
200-pound Atlantic bluefin tuna would probably fall into what the National
Marine Fisheries Service has defined as a “small medium” sized fish less than 73
inches in length, which is not
even large enough to be legally harvested by a commercial tuna fisherman.
The
International Game Fish Association, which is responsible for maintaining the list
of world record fish of various species, recognizes a 1,496-pound bluefin tuna (Thunnus
thynnus) and a 907-pound,
6-ounce Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) as current all-tackle
world records for those species of bluefin (there is also a third species, the
southern bluefin, which rarely if ever enters the northern Pacific, and so is
irrelevant to this discussion), thus, when put in an appropriate context, a 200-pound
bluefin tuna is not really a “big fish” at all.
In that regard, it should also be
noted that the
International Game Fish Association does not merely record the largest fish
caught by recreational fishermen; it also codifies what is generally considered
sporting conduct amongst anglers, noting that such rules
“have been formulated…to promote ethical
and sporting angling practices, to establish uniform regulations for the compilation
of world game fish records, and to provide basic angling guidelines for use in
fishing tournaments and any other group angling activities.
Both of the tuna world records
mentioned above were caught in accordance with the
IGFA’s “uniform regulations for the compilation of world game fish records,”
which provide, among many other things, that
“The following acts will disqualify a
catch…
“3.
Resting the rod in a rod holder, on the gunwale of the boat, or any
other object while playing the fish.”
Thus, when the San Diego
Reader article asks, “Using the rail on big fish—yes or no?” it was already
embarking on an exploration of dubious ethical merit. Sadly, it urged its readers to take the less
ethical path, saying that
“the larger bluefin, able to dive unabated
by the cold depths with their remarkable endothermic system, will often
prevail. With the heavier gear and
fighting a 200-pound bluefin, it can become akin to lifting weights much
heavier than a body can handle in a prolonged battle.
“This is where using the rail comes into
play. Modern standup rods typically have
an extended fore grip and are tapered to handle the stress when rested on the
rail. The method is simple, squat down
low with the rod fore grip on the rail and use the leverage to reduce the
strain on the angler while fighting a large fish.”
In other words, instead of
encouraging the angler to engage in a sporting contest with the tuna, the
article encourages that angler to forego sportsmanship and cheat—even though
far larger bluefin have been taken without resting a rod on the rail.
Of course, the author of the
article wasn’t unaware of the sportsmanship angle, and did make a weak effort
to address it, arguing that
“The physical exertion causes lactic acid
to build up in the fish’s muscles. This
in turn leads to blood acidification which can disrupt the metabolism of the
fish. So using the rail is not a lack of
sportsmanship, it is working smarter, not harder, and can make for better odds
of survival on catch-and-release fishing while providing better food for the
table. Stand up and fight like a man may
be an outdated mantra, and certainly should at least have exceptions. Were we anglers really wanting to even up the
odds, we would have to forego our modern boats, rods and reels, rod belts,
harnesses, fighting chairs, and any other unnatural thing, and swim out and
catch them with our teeth.”
I think that maybe the next time
that I’m out in Yosemite National Park, I’m going to climb El Capitan. Of course, I’ll hire a helicopter to take me
over the steep stuff, and land me a couple yards from the summit, so I can walk
the rest of the way, but that’s just climbing smarter, not harder. And it’s good for the rock face, too, as I
won’t be pulling on ropes and driving pitons, or otherwise damaging the
surface. And don’t say that I’m doing it
the easy way, because if people really wanted a challenge, they wouldn’t use ropes
or gloves or pitons at all; they’d toss away their carabiners, technical
clothes, climbing shoes, and just scamper up the stones buck naked…
Makes just about as much sense as
what the guy in the San Diego Reader was saying.
Without effort and pain, there is
no such thing as a victory.
And I write that just four days
after a friend engaged in the most intense fish fight of his life.
We were south of Fire Island, New
York, drifting across a 20-fathom hump with the chum slowly leaking out of its
pail, leaving a slick on the rippled sea.
A plankton bloom had tinted the ocean a strange, chalky green, and
dropped visibility to almost nothing. Still,
menhaden pods painted the surface with irregular, dark brown patches, often
passing close to the boat, so there were signs of life.
Even so, when noon passed without
a single fish touching our baits, I wondered whether we should have fished
elsewhere.
Finally, right at one o’clock, a
rod went off as a fish picked up the bait that was drifting, at most, 25 feet below
the chum pail. The initial take was fast
and strong, but unremarkable. We had
seen many such takes before. But this
time, the fish would not stop.
We got the angler strapped into a
belt and harness, and he leaned back into the rod. It was a 50-100 standup model, the reel
loaded with 60-pound line. With the drag
set at 20 pounds, we expected the fight to end fairly soon.
It didn’t.
As line continued to peel from
the spool, I lit up the boat’s diesels and began to back down, keeping the line
centered over the transom. It prevented
the reel from being stripped, but the fish kept taking line for most of the time,
except for the few instances when it suddenly changed direction, sometimes heading
straight at the boat, when the angler could gain a little back.
Three hours into the fight, the
fish showed no sign of tiring, but the angler still stood strong.
Four hours in, the fish was just beginning
to weaken, and I figured we’d have it up to the boat in another hour’s time. The angler still stood, sipping water from
time to time to avoid dehydration, leaning back against the reel’s drag,
gaining line when he could and otherwise enduring whatever the fish chose to
do.
Maybe twenty minutes later, maybe
a bit more, the angler began to gain line more quickly. At one point, he claimed that the fish was
shaking its head, but nonetheless he gained ground, until the fish—whatever it
was—was probably fifty feet from the boat.
He leaned back against the fish’s pull.
The next thing I knew, the angler
was falling backward, his line limp in the rising breeze. After four hours and 45 minutes, the fish had
broken free.
When the line was reeled to the
boat, I looked at the break, and noticed that the line was scuffed and abraded
in multiple places.
I can’t be sure of anything, but
from the way the fish fought, I believe that it was a very large thresher shark. We had hooked many threshers in that place
before; the largest we ever brought near the boat weighed close to 400 pounds. This one was far larger.
The fish fought deep for most of
the time, suddenly changing direction from time to time the way that threshers
typically do. I think that the last time
it did so, it wrapped the leader around the base of its tail, so that the “head
shakes” the angler was feeling were really the tail slashing into the leader
and line. A 400 pound thresher is 14 or
15 feet long, so an even heavier fish would have been long enough to reach—and abrade—the
line above the leader.
At the same time, the tail wrap
forced my angler to bring the shark up backwards, slowing down the tempo of the
fight, and giving the fish the opportunity to further weaken the line with its
tail, because yes, the “head shakes” continued.
Under the circumstances, the end
was probably inevitable; we never expected a fish that large, and the 50-pound
gear we were fishing was just not enough to get the job done. We might have had a chance to bring the fish
boatside, but the tail wrap sealed our fate.
The angler, on the other hand,
was more than up to the task. He stood
against the pull of the fish, and the 20 pounds of drag, for nearly five hours,
never taking any sort of a break, and never even suggesting that he might give
up the fight. He plucked the rod out of
the holder immediately upon the strike, and held onto it until the end.
He was exhausted and hurting—still
hurting a couple days after the fight—but would have gone on if the fish had
allowed.
It was his first really big fish,
his first really disheartening loss, his first experience with a fish that left
him completely wrung out and sore. I
fear that I might have done him a wrong, opening the door on a world that will
hold him captive for the next 40 or 50
years.
I hope that I’m at the wheel, and
he’s in my cockpit, when his next truly big fish comes along. Should that scene play out, I can’t know how
it might end, but I already know that one thing will be true:
He will not rest his rod on the
rail.
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