A group of hunters takes to the sea in search of the ocean’s biggest game.
Photo above: Steve McInnes, owner of the Strictly Business with a good striped marlin. On this unusual day, everyone on board boated a striped marlin. As soon as this photo was taken, the marlin was released.
Like most hunters, I also like to fish. I’m neither avid nor expert, and fishing is generally not what I write about. I might as well write about do-it-yourself brain surgery. However, if you must know, one of the first articles I ever sold was a fishing story, to Fur-Fish-Game magazine, for $35. Real cash money!
There are very few fishing stories among thousands of articles that have followed. I don’t fish as much as I did when I was young. But I still enjoy it, and I love bringing home fresh fish. For years, I’ve done an annual salmon trip with my friend and hunting partner Jim Rough, owner of Black Gold Lodge in Rivers Inlet, BC. I call it my annual “meat hunt.” Here’s what I like most about it: You don’t fish passively for big salmon. You hunt them. I’ve learned a lot from Jim Rough. And, since he’s a hunter, while we’re hunting for big salmon, we talk about hunting.
I figured a big salmon would be the pinnacle of my limited angling career. But other prizes await. Billfish lurk as an ultimate adventure. Part of this is because of fishing/hunting literature: Ernest Hemingway was an avid hunter of marlin. So was great Western writer Zane Grey. Hunting a marlin became a bucket-list thing for me, which I accomplished on a 70th birthday soiree with Morgan O’Kennedy’s Big Blue Vilankulo off coastal Mozambique.
In hunting, the outcome is somewhat controlled by the decision to press the trigger. In fishing, although we bait and hunt specifically, we have little control over which or what size fish takes the bait. My black marlin wasn’t big, but I loved the experience, and I wanted to do it again.
Last year, while I was hunting in Alaska, my wife, Donna, was in Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas with a lady friend. They went fishing on the Strictly Business and slammed ’em: blue and striped marlin, dorado, big tuna and wahoo. I had FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).
Fast forward a year. I joined Donna on the Strictly Business in early November. Our group also included my friend JR Inman, his brother Roger, their adoptive brother Rick Eldredge, and Strictly Business owner Steve McInnes and his family. The whole group consisted of seasoned hunters, mostly with African experience. The rest of the group were experienced deep-sea anglers; I was the novice. The discussion on the main deck was mostly about hunting and firearms: best cartridges, old and new, favorite handload recipes. They were on home turf (water); I was on unfamiliar ground (water). Wanting to learn, I got polite answers to questions about fishing. Then the conversation swung back. An audio tape would suggest we were standing around a campfire in game country, not grinding through swells in the Sea of Cortez.
As with forest and plains, the water looks much the same in all directions to you and me, but not to the creatures who live there. Hunting for salmon, I learned to look for the nuances of currents and tide lines, and watch for birds diving on bait fish. Even with no land in sight, there was little difference. Out there, we are not the only hunters. Dolphins aren’t jumping for our pleasure; they’ve found something tasty near the surface.
Most of this falls on experienced captain and crew, who have a better vista from the upper decks, and understand what they’re seeing. I couldn’t influence the action, but I wanted to understand the process. Much hunting can be described as “hours of boredom, spiced with moments of extreme excitement.” Ocean fishing is like that. Patience is not my virtue, but I don’t find waiting for game boring. Sometimes it’s agonizingly tedious, but those adrenaline-fueled moments are worth the wait.
Our first morning, we followed dolphins to tuna, and caught some dandies for bait, for lunch, and to take home. Then we got serious about hunting marlin. Serious DIY hunters look askance at guided hunters as little more than trigger men. I follow both routes; with no apology, I accept some truth in this. Deep sea fishing from a modern boat is not The Old Man and the Sea. The angler more is reeler than artist. It’s a team sport; success is unlikely without a good crew. In my case,as an aging beginner, I needed coaching: “Rod up. Keep tension. Let him run. Now reel.”
I fought my fish from the fighting chair. That’s hard enough, but I haven’t yet hooked one likely to drag me over the transom. On our second day, while Donna fought a nice striped marlin in the chair, we had another hookup. Roger Eldredge fought it freehand from the gunwale. It was the biggest marlin we hooked—it took 500 yards of line. I’m not sure I could have handled that, and I was happy to use the chair.
The target fish is one thing, what hits is another. When I asked what fish we might catch, JR told me “everything but dorado; they’re just not in.” Guess they all didn’t get that memo; on the second day I fought a fish we didn’t know was a dorado until it got close to the boat. It was a great-eating fish, and I was happy to have caught it. Everyone was surprised.
The wahoo is sort of an incidental catch, a long, fast torpedo of a fish, hard fighter, also great eating. In the late morning, Donna caught a big wahoo. Just an hour later, we had an even bigger one at the boat when the leader broke, bitten through by sharp teeth. Two hours later, it was my turn, and we got a monster wahoo on board. While filleting it, something deep inside flashed in the sun. It was our lure–bitten off two hours earlier. There is so much under the surface we can’t know. Clearly, this fish followed us for two hours and many miles, contemplating another bite.
Where we were fishing, black, blue, and striped marlin all occur in descending order of size and numbers. All the marlin we caught on this trip were striped. It’s the smallest variety but the most plentiful there at that time, still an awesome and athletic fish. My striped marlin gave a heroic fight. With good coaching—and my arms and back aching—we got him to the boat. I put a picture on social media, and got an instant response from a troll: “Not very big. I hope you released him.”
Striped marlins aren’t ever as big as the giant black marlins Papa Hemingway caught ninety years ago. In hunting, you can back off the trigger when a smaller animal is in your sights. In fishing, you cannot prevent a smaller fish from taking your bait. Regardless of size, billfish are handled gently. They are never gaffed; they are hauled up by hand for hook removal, a quick photo is taken, and then they are released.
Regardless of size, it is an amazing experience to haul in such a legendary fish. It’s a thrill to watch them jump and tail-walk. Sometimes it’s close, other times it’s a silvery flash a quarter mile behind. On our second day, taking turns, everyone caught a marlin–an amazing day.
It happens like this: baits set, lines out, we languish, talk guns and hunting. Then one of the rods twitches, bends, the reel screams. “Fish on!” The designated hitter makes his/her way to the chair. Other lines are brought in or cleared to avoid fouling.
You can’t know the size of the fish, even be certain of the species, when you take the rod, but then you feel the power of the fish. Then, controlled panic sets in. Everyone has a job. The most critical skill lay with our excellent young Captain Reuben, working the boat with or against waves and current, backing to gain line, maneuvering to ensure the fish didn’t get under the boat and foul the propeller. For a lifelong hunter, albeit casual angler, big-game fishing is an amazing and altogether different experience.
