Sashimi Season 2019

The one that perhaps should have got away...

I think it's safe to say that we have all experienced "The one that got away", or sometimes "The one that shouldn't have got away, but did." In far fewer instances do we encounter "The one that perhaps should have got away, but didn't." I have a tale for you of just that.

It happened sometime in September out at Block Canyon, Fishtails, in what was one of the finer tuna bites of recent blue-water memory. Captain Doug, Gavin and I set-up on the chunk, which was the preferred method for enticing tuna and began our drift. It was not long till we were tight to a yellowfin on the spinning gear and following a spirited battle, by both the fish and angler, we boated the 80 lb tuna. Oh yeah, the leader broke as we sunk the gaff, but this is not where this story ends.

Behind the boat, we had attracted a different class of critter. A twelve inch squid danced in our underwater lights and while he took interest in our boat, we took interest in putting him on a hook and seeing what would eat him. A quick dip of the net and we were in business with our first live bait of the evening.

Following a brief 10 minute soak, our live squid was taken. Line ran out with pace from the Stella spinning reel and the drag was engaged, hook set! "Fish on, or off?", Capt Doug questioned, as the line seemed to limp, then came tight again with some serious vigor. We quickly found ourselves engaged in a straight up and down battle, which is typical with larger tuna. Our setup had a 100 lb leader to 80 lb braid, and on a spinning rod our intention was to play him in gradually, the ole slow and steady wins the race tactic. This is all fine and dandy except this fish had a different plan and began heated runs back from once he came - the deep. I continued to push the drag up as the 300 yd spool was growing thin, "Not long till we can see the knot on this one" I said as I continued to push the drag beyond where I wanted to - expecting to feel a sudden release of pressure as the fish broke something somewhere. However this did not happen - the fish turned and we were able to gain on him.

At about 50 minutes into the struggle, the fish was 30 yards behind the boat on the surface, line nearly straight out, we could make out his profile in the darkness with help from the aft spreader lights. He was backwards and upside down. It appeared the beast was tail wrapped or something, it was difficult to tell. "What the he...." I was cut off mid-sentence as a vicious tail slap righted the fish and it nearly porpoised as it went on it's most impressive run yet. Against serious pressure and a wet deck, I lost my footing and landed hard against the side of the boat. It is the closest I have come to being pulled over in my 5 year canyon career. Now, it was personal.

Another forty-five minutes and this fish had nearly had its fill, once again coming up behind the boat, this time a fair bit closer - 10 yards or so. "Certainly coming in backwards" Gavin remarked, and he was right. A quick gaff in the fish's head and a tail rope before he got any other ideas and over the rail! One snagged Bigeye tuna ~ 170lbs!

How that half an inch of skin held this fish, we will never know, nor will he!

"How do you get blood out of…"

I love that window of time immediately after an intense fishing trip when the fish stories are too fresh to re-tell, your physical body is beat-up and achy, and your mental capacity resembles the spinning wheel of a resetting iPhone. Those few hours after you’ve cleaned up but before you’ve slept, when you’re coming down from the high of fishing, and you're wrapping your head around your deep affinity for an endeavor that seems to keep costing more money, and occasionally puts stress on your health, safety, and personal relationships.

I'm convinced that much of the great fishing-related literature was written during these periods immediately upon return to shore, because the author just wanted to be left alone with their thoughts and remind themselves–through the aches and exhaustion– why it carries such meaning for them. I’m not a literary scholar, but I’d posit that Herman Melville first set pen to paper to tell the tale of Moby-Dick as an excuse to sit down for a while to recover from a post-voyage hangover, while Mrs. Melville stood in judgement and chirped that whaling was just an excuse for Herman to hangout with his friends and drink beer, and does this 'Aaron or Ahab or whatever his name is' guy even have a real job because he sounds like a bad influence. 

So when I got home on Saturday from my first overnighter to the Canyons on the Offshore Investment I cracked open another (entirely unnecessary) beer and tried to debrief myself before I fell asleep on the couch. In between Googling  "how to get blood out of [item of clothing]” enough times to show up on an NSA watch-list, I tried to jot down a bunch of notes from the trip while they were still fresh in my mind, but it would be a few days before I had the chance to write it all out...

Like most great fishing trips this one had come together a little-last-minute, but the weather looked like it was going to cooperate and I managed to have the weekend relatively free of conflicting commitments. Keith and Mark (Bates ’00) pick me up Thursday at 10pm for the trip to the Cape, after we had finished work, packed up, and had our hall-passes stamped for the weekend. All signs pointed to it being smooth-sailing to Falmouth given the time of day…so of course we immediately hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-93. Three lanes cut down to one so that three DOT guys could watch one DOT guy dig a hole. Nice teamwork boys.

We get in to Keith’s late, half-heartedly drink a beer and head to bed for an early start. Given that the last time I pushed-off on the OI had been after a night of heavy Carlo Rossi drinking, I was very up for a good night’s sleep before 30 hours on the boat. Keith managed to sleep for maybe 3 hours because he’s a goddamn fishing robot, while Mark and I have a snore-off until a giddy Keith wakes us up. Coffee is brewed, the assembly-line production of an unnecessary number of sandwiches-per-person is completed, and the boat is loaded up. 

One of the oft-referenced great parts of being a BFC alumnae is ending up meeting, through fishing, a bunch of other Bates alums from earlier and later years who you immediately get along with as though you've been friends for years. I had met Mark a few times before and instinctively liked him, but hadn’t fished with him until this weekend. It makes you wonder if the Bates Admissions Office has a quota to fill each year of gentlemen who like outdoor pursuits that involve staying up all night in unfavorable conditions, canned light beer, and coming home with all of their clothes in a trash bag. The BFC might not make the cover of Bates magazine or admissions pamphlets like the ski team, but goddamn do we have our own version of school pride.

The ride out is flat and sunny and we do our best to be ready if a helicopter flies overhead looking to film a Coors Light commercial. As we near the canyons, we exchange radio chatter with a variety of men who sound like they consider Jimmy Buffett a trusted lifestyle advisor, and speak with the thinly-veiled bravado of a Dos Equis commercial. It quickly becomes apparent that Keith not only holds his own in these conversations, but is considered a familiar and trusted source of intel by these other captains– some of whom he’s never met, their friendship built entirely over VHF radio. These men will henceforth be referred to as "Keith’s boyfriends” by Mark and me. Keith seems to find less humor in it than we do, fair enough.

There was a bluefin tournament going on, so much of the early radio chatter was other boats complaining about how their catching of yellowfin was preventing them from catching bluefin, which we equate to complaining about getting blow-jobs because you’re trying to get laid. After a quick stop to make casts into a few bait-balls with heavy bird activity we reach the edge of the Canyon and get our spread out. There are dolphins and whales everywhere we look, but they don't seem to have a Tuna entourage along with them.

Now, I know a very little bit about off-shore fishing, but I’m lucky enough to have friends who are great fisherman, and invite me along to make sarcastic comments, sandwiches, and power-moves on the radio (fish love R&B classics, just ask any marine biologist). So, without a strong understanding of how to rig a ballyhoo without it looking paraplegic, I focus on doing a lot of hosing off the deck, pointing out dolphins to people who are disinterested in seeing any more dolphins, and asking rhetorical questions about whether anyone else needs a beer. I know my role on the boat. 

So, after a few passes along the edge with no luck, I switch the Sirius over to a hardcore rap station that drops the N-word so frequently that 3 white guys are noticeably uncomfortable singing along, even though we’re many miles offshore and no-one is in earshot but a pod of dolphins. (Thanks to rapgenius.com I was able to track down not only the lyrics of one of the songs, but an incredible "translation" of an especially memorable line.)

Within 5-minutes of the radio change we’ve got a rod bent over. Clear the spread, I strap into a fighting belt, Keith and Mark glove-up, and boom, I’ve got my first-ever yellowfin on the boat.

And thus begins the great correlation/causation debate that surrounds fishing superstitions. Switch to rap and a rod bends? Stay on that channel for hours. Pour a little Crown Royal overboard and the bite starts up? Better keep that purple bag within arms-reach, Poseidon's thirsty. Did cracking that Coors Light call in another fish? Better have another one, wouldn’t want to jinx it. 

There’s a consistent line of weeds floating in the water, which wouldn't be a problem if we weren't dragging a giant leaf rake full of hooks behind us. But other than constantly de-weeding lines, the water looks good, we’ve got consistent dolphin and whale sightings (at this point even I’m sick of them), and the fish-finder is marking bait. The bite is sporadic, but we put another keeper Yellowfin on ice before the sun starts to set and layers of clothing start to go on for the night. 

Set up for the overnight drift for Swordfish, involving floating glowstick-filled balloons on the surface with squids bumping around in the depths under blinking LED discoballs. An eery look with green globes bobbing on the ocean under a star-filled sky, hypnotic even. So hypnotic I can feel my eyes start to close…I’ll just go up front and lie down on this bean-bag for a few minutes… 

Wake up about three hours later. Whoops. Did I miss anything? Apparently yes, Keith and Mark had picked up and moved the boat, at-speed, to another location and I slept through it, water crashing over the bow into my face and all. I guess that answers my earlier question of is it easy to sleep on the boat?

I’m half-awake as Keith and Mark sort through confusion and crossed lines with a swordfish hooked up beneath us. I offer literally nothing to the equation as my sleep-and-whisky-addled brain watches it transpire, and the fish is lost to Keith’s dismay. There had been talk of continuing a swordfish streak, which is a surefire way to curse yourself. I go back to check the beanbag for any damage and am out like a light within seconds, apparently I sleep really well on the OI waterbed.

As the sun starts to rise we swap gear, put the spread out, and switch back to the troll with the promise of a dawn-bite waking us up from the nighttime daze. Almost as soon as the sun is up, the bite turns on and we have multiple rounds with 2-5 rods going off at once as schools of yellowfin find our spread. A lot of small “rat” schoolies, but with some keepers mixed in. We put two gaffed fish on the deck at once during a full knock-down of, which means two fish bouncing around spraying blood in a manner that it looks like we tried to put them out of their misery with a hedge-trimmer. 

We’ve had 20+ on the line and have five 30-60lb yellowfin and a stocky Mahi Mahi in the icebox when the bite seems to turn off as quickly as it began. The weather report turns out to be inaccurate and with rolling seas and no promising reports coming over the radio we decide to pick up and head north, stopping to check a few lobster pot buoys for any circling Mahi but with no luck. Apart from a minor hit-and-run incident with an unidentified whale, the ride back home is relatively smooth. Or so Mark tells me, as I’ve fallen asleep again and Keith has nodded off for a few minutes (the man literally doesn’t sleep). 

We return to the Falmouth dock covered in a thick layer of crunchy salt, as though Poseidon himself shook-up the OI and rimmed it in kosher salt like a margarita. Hands as cramped and scrunched up as an arthritic grandma, covered in fish scales and what feels like hundreds of tiny cuts given a once-over with sandpaper. Sore in a bunch of muscles that you never know you had, but are apparently well-used when keeping your footing on a boat in rolling seas. 

"Tommy Boy Luggage"

Fish are processed on the dock, a discussion about the shotgun techniques for hunting seagulls is given far more serious consideration than is warranted, and the boat is cleaned of its carnage. We fill two coolers and a Coors Light cooler bag with beautiful tuna steaks and mahi-mahi filets, dump the remaining melting, bloody ice on top, and throw everything in the car. All clothing from the trip is covered in salt and fish blood and is tossed into Tommy Boy luggage with the hope that it stays air-tight until it reaches the washing machine.

I get home and take one of the more satisfying showers of my life, realizing that I'm still swaying involuntarily from sea-legs and exhaustion. My fridge is packed full of sushi-quality tuna meat, my entire body aches, and I can feel my eyes starting to close again. My bed feels really nice, but I could sleep anywhere. 

When I wake up the next morning was I ready to do an overnighter offshore again? No, probably not. Am I ready to go again today? Absolutely. But first I gotta buy some Oxyclean and a vacuum sealer to finish cleaning up from this trip.

Bigeye Highway

Hawsepiper

Back on the bite...

And another one bites the dust...

Since I began bluewater fishing in 2008 it has been a series of ups and downs. This year certainly had more of the latter than the former with bad weather and generally bad fishing. But on the last few trips things have really picked up on the old OI, with much more consistent action and lots of meat in the ice box.

Over the years we've had our share of successes, with just about every big game fish available in the Northeast gracing the OI at one time or another. The staples of yellowfin and mahi are frequent visitors to the fishbox. And lately there's been a strong surgence of our nightime billfish the sword.

And who could forget the 700 lb blue marlin in Veatches canyon in 2010. I certainly won't ever forget that fish.

 Even the elusive wahoo has made an appearance at the OI once or twice. Mmm he is tasty.

White marlin? Definate check....

 Bigeyes? You bet. Who could forget the double bigeye hookup in West Atlantis that made Clark Winchell and his First Mate Sleaveless Tee famous

Mako sharks? There have been a couple. Bluefin? God too many. Skipjacks? You better believe it!

But one species has continued to elude me. Odly enough, they aren't stereotypically all the difficult to catch. The Longfin Albacore. The Penguin. The Chicken of the Sea. Why have I never been able to put an albie on the deck? No idea. They are elusive. Or something like that.

Well Albie, today I cross you off the list. The penguin has landed. A few of his other buddies made it to the cooler as well.

The yellowfin tuna (and four more of his bretheren)

 The Wahoo (Of the four we hooked, he was the only one who failed to saw through the leader.)

And there you are Mr. Penguin, with your soft chunk white albacome meat. It took a while for us to finally meet, but you're welcome on board my boat any time.

2012 White Marlin Open

The Hard Four, at right, in the Marina. 

At some point earlier this year my buddy John Libre (Bates '02) calls and says there is a free spot on his brother-in-law's boat for some fishing tournament and do I want to go fishing in Maryland in August. I tell him I'm interested, but not sure I can make it work schedule-wise, and let me get back to him about it. He calls me again at the end of July to remind me that I never got back to him. So, I check the calendar, figure out how to make it work with the wife, and start to figure out how to get to Ocean City, Maryland. I'm thinking "awesome, I'm going fishing, I'll get to meet some new fishing buddies, and we'll probably have a cocktail or two."

About 1-week later I'm on a shuttle bus from the Philadelphia Airport to what appears to be the back parking lot of the Philadelphia Airport, but is actually the home of the tiny-ass plane that is taking me to Ocean City. My carry-on bag was almost too big to be checked on this plane. I thought they were going to check to see if the weight of the passengers was evenly distributed on each side of the aisle. On the final descent into Ocean City the pilot didn't say "flight attendants prepare for landing," he just turned over his shoulder and yelled "Elaine, sit down!"

John picks me up at the airport and I find two coozied can beers at my feet, and on the 45min drive to Ocean City I begin to realize that this is going to be some more serious fishing than I anticipated. Turns out we're in the 2012 White Marlin Open, the largest Marlin tournament in the world...something that John failed to mention previously. At this point I begin to remember him saying there was a cash prize, which I had in my head as $250,000. Turns out I was off by a 0. It was a $2,500,000 purse. Oh.

So here is the cast of characters that I meet upon my arrival at our condo at the marina:

John Libre - He significantly undersold this trip when he invited me.

Frank Coulson - Brother-in-law of John Libre, owner and captain of the 36' Contender "Hard Four," and all around great dude. I would alternately call him "Boss" all week.

John "Zoo" Andrae - real name John, but was a child model and got this nickname from Zoolander as a result. Obviously. He's the fishing captain out of New Jersey and to put it simply, knows how to fucking fish. He would want to murder us 14 times during the course of 3 days.

Todd Saylor - Frank's buddy from way back and college, who now lives in Cancun where he owns a bar and sells oceanfront lots. And yes, he is exactly as fun as you're thinking he probably is.

Chet - the fucking new guy who thought he was just going fishing.

So there are 250 boats vying for this $2.5million purse, and as the 36' center-console we are definitely on the smaller side. In the marina we're surrounded by 50'+ fishing boats of various ports of origin, with various fishing and/or sexual innuendo names, and teams of matching-shirt and matching beer-gut men. We're hearing about how hot the White Marlin bite has been the past few weeks, and at this point everyone is expecting there to be a lot of competition for top prize. 

Tuesday morning we're up and out of the marina by 4am, and motoring out towards Baltimore Canyon for about 4 hours, with the triple 300s blaring. Zoo is driving, we're all sacked out in the waterproof beanbags on the deck of the boat. These things are awesome, especially if you've been over-served the night before. We haven't been, yet, so it's just a nice treat to get a few more hours of sleep in. 

Lines go in at 8:30am and within minutes we hear other boats calling in releases. Long morning of nothing, and then Frank hooks into one a little after 1pm and fights it into the boat. We deck-check it, and it is under-size, so it goes back in. We have a few more hits throughout the day, but don't land anything else. I recall the ride back in being somewhat somber, but I was also passed back out in the beanbags for most of it. As we head under the drawbridge we run a single white marlin flag (upside down to indicate it was a release) up the outrigger. After we pull into the marina we start to look around and see that there are a couple boats with multiple flags, but quite a few of the big fishing yachts are flag-less…so we're doing above average.

Wednesday morning are we're discovering that Tuesday evening was a bad time to create a new bloody mary recipe, and a worse time to drink said recipe out of 24oz commemorative Slim Jim mugs. The beanbags were pleasant yesterday, necessary today. 8:30am and our lines are out again, and we're starting to look like a team…or at least we're not tripping over ourselves as much and Zoo seems to not be audibly sighing as much from the tuna tower. A little after 9am and a left outrigger explodes. Frank grabs it, and there's a nice white marlin on. Then our right-flat rod blows up as well, and I grab it. As Libre and Saylor clear the rest of the lines Frank's fish drops the hook, but mine is on. 

After what seemed like a much longer fight than it was, I'm sweating Tito's vodka and Old Bay seasoning and we've got another white marlin on the deck that is too short. Later that afternoon Frank adds another released white marlin to our tally, and we miss 7 hook-ups. Zoo is not pleased, nor should he be. We come in flying two upside-down flags. Same deal as Tuesday, there are a lot of boats flying 1 or 0 flags on the way in. As we pull into the dock we see a boat 5 slips down has some unexpected company: 6 US Marshals and another half-dozen Ocean City cops. Not good news. Rumors are flying on the dock, and while we never found out the exact details, the working title for this blog post was originally  "Don't register your $2 million dollar boat in a very public fishing tournament when you're wanted by US Marshalls for tax evasion, or you will be lead away in handcuffs from the dock and have your boat impounded in front of everyone." But that felt a little wordy. 

So after all that commotion, and after the Coast Guard has come and helped impound the boat, we find out that after the weigh-in that night there is only 1 White Marlin on the board, everything else has been under-weight. And as it stands then, that White Marlin will win $900,000. Now we know why Zoo is distraught, we were 1 good fish away from a big win. Fuck. I'm due to fly out too early the next day to go out fishing. Double fuck. I change my flight at dinner, there's a Million-Dollar fish out in dem waters.

Thursday morning starts with some action, but not the kind we're looking for. We hit a few schools of Tuna and Mahi Mahi and are trying to get our lines in before they can take all our bait. It strikes me that I would have been content catching these fish on the flight down, in fact on another day these hook-ups would have been considered a good day of fishing, but not today.  The afternoon gets hot, bulas are pulled over every inch of flesh possible to avoid the sun, and we keep trolling SW in chase of the 82 degree water that they've been hitting in. We've got an iPod on shuffle playing tunes on the boat, and "Dancing on the Ceiling" comes on. "White Marlin love Lionel Ritchie" Zoo deadpans from the tower. We get another white marlin to the boat. Undersized again. Fuck. But damn white marlin are fun to catch.

Libre,  Coulson, and Saylor with a fish that looks big enough to me.

We're hearing one boat over the radio that has released over 5. The 3:30pm lines-out deadline creeps up on us. It is a different kind of end-of-day. Usually it is a sunset or a trip departure that calls it, this time it is a call over the radio saying lines-out. The somber mood while de-rigging fades quickly as the disappointment over not being in the money fades to the realization that we got into a good number of fish and had a hell of a time doing so. The music is turned up, man-hugs and high-fives are given, and coors lights downed in seconds.We get back to the dock and clean the boat. Not a lot of flags flying that day, but there's still one more day of the tournament (not for us, we'd already fished our 3 days). The lone White Marlin is still on the board, and worth a lot more money per pound than that fisherman first expected. 

Beers start going down pretty fast, showers are taken, and we head to "Seacrets" which Zoo tells us is the must-go destination in Ocean City. Now, Ocean City looks like a lot of kinda-sad seasonal destinations on the east coast, with a lot of half-functional neon, ferris wheels with questionable structural integrity, and mini-golf courses across the street from mini-golf courses. And a fucking "Sunsations" on every-other block selling beach crap. So, admittedly my expectations for this Jamaican-themed establishment weren't sky-high on the way there. Turns out this place is 5 acres, all covered in sand, with at least 6 different "scenes" ranging from restaurant, to in-the-ocean beach bar, to nightclub. There's a Rastafarian band lead by a fat white guy, and they are far better than that description sounds. There's also a Jamaican bobsled in the courtyard that we'd partake in, obviously. 

The next morning my tiny-ass flight out of Maryland is delayed and I check the White Marlin Open standings on my phone. We're in 93rd place overall out of 250 boats. Not bad. Oh, and the prize of that single White Marlin had gone up…to $1.4million. Not a bad week of fishing for that guy.

Here's a video that I put together. The song you may not know is "Knock, Knock" by Mac Miller, a 20-year-old white rapper out of Pittsburgh who is better than that description sounds.

Password is flounder

2012 White Marlin Open - Hard Four from Chet Clem on Vimeo.

Amen Tred

"In life, a man's man needs one very special double shotgun, a custom rifle, a handmade bow. A boat to hunt down blue marlin and giant tuna and one hell of a woman."

- Captain Tred Barta

Blue (marlin)

You're my girl BLUE

CANYON BOUND

Atlantis STEELE