Crew of One The Odyssey of a Solo Marlin Fisherman

9781585421541

1585421545

ONE FISHING THE OCEANS OF MY MIND At five knots, it took me almost a whole day to arrive at the indigo current I had been hoping to find long before sunset. White-feathered breasts of gliding Cory's shearwaters and the flickering wings of small black petrels had first caught my eye; then ripples announced an impending change. A westerly eddy of the warm water of the Gulf Stream, flowing up from the south, had finally moved in to pierce the colder green water of the Labrador Current, sweeping down from the north. Nomadic waters collided in colorful silence, four or five hundred yards off Caribeña'sstarboard bow. The sea surface temperature gradually increased from 76 to 77.5 degrees, tripping the alarm of my depth finder, a Raytheon V 8110. Excited, I scaled the ladder connecting cockpit and flying bridge; fast feet alternating the seven narrow teak steps, sure hands sliding up the inclined aluminum rails. I silenced the temperature alarm and registered my location in case I wanted to return. According to my marine chart, I was close to the 500-fathom line off the Norfolk Canyon, eighty miles off the Virginia shore, trolling in 3,500 feet of water, the bottom of the ocean a full kilometer beneath Caribeña'sblack hull. I swung Caribeñaaround, and set her on automatic pilot at five knots, running parallel to a patchy line of sargasso weed, a free-floating yellow-brown plant that extends for miles along the many inner currents, forming the seams of the stream. Weed lines are the fertile "flat forests" of the ocean, rich with plankton, a magnet for small fish that in turn often attract large pelagics like marlin. Back on deck, I checked to make sure that none of the four baits I was trolling had picked up any weed. It felt good to have found this site without the assistance of temperature charts prepared from satellite imaging. I sensed a good omen. Judging from the height of the sun, I guessed it was 4:00. I scanned the horizon with binoculars, picking out two orange buoys that marked a commercial long-liner's set. Each set is thirty to forty miles of 700-pound test line, armed with 4,000 hooks dangling from as many leaders, each carrying a Cyalume Lightstick that glows green or blue to attract fish. The long-liners were after swordfish and tuna, but each set is a death trap, killing scores of untargeted fish, mainly white and blue marlin in their by-catch. The long-liners would be back at night to haul in their bounty. Earlier, I had heard on the VHF marine channels of my radio that several white marlin had been caught in a similar break, probably by Norfolk or Virginia Beach sportfishing boats, since I didn't recognize the voices of the captains or the names of their vessels. I listened in but didn't talk to them-never do. I like to keep a low profile unless I have something important to say about fishing or weather conditions that I judge they ought to know. "I just let one go. I'm one for four," reported one captain. "We raised three and missed them all." "Marlin?" "Yup. Three whites." "Lose those rubber hooks!" said a third voice. "How many you seen, Johnny?" "Saw two. We're two for two," came fast the happy answer, and then with a disappointed tone: "but we missed a nice blue after that. I thought we had him good...." I could almost touch his disappointment, his sense of failure. The guy was in pain. The two whites caught couldn't make him forget the big blue he had lost, which could have been the only blue that had chased his bait in several years. "That you, by the tanker?" "Yes, sir. To its starboard side." "Thought so. By the six-twenty line?" "Yeah." That was the key information I had been hoping to hear: the 620 line, which referred to the horizontal or "bottom" line of the Loran grid overlap