A True Mixed Bag

My good friend Chris (who is actually known as Fisherman Chris) runs a charter boat company called World Class Anglers (340-344-1155 and www.worldclassanglers.com) and every now and again he takes me on his charters as his mate. Usually I get to do this when he has a lot of trips booked in the week and towards the end he wants me to come along and do all the work running the lines, rigging bait, hauling coolers and so forth. This gives him what he calls a break even though he is still working as hard as the next charter boat trying to get his guests dinner. In any event, it is a good chance for me to go fishing and that is exactly what I got to do yesterday. We went to the North Drop about 20 miles north of St. John where the Puerto Rican trench begins. The drop goes from 150feet to about 2,000 and then as you go another 25 miles further it drastically falls off to over 6,000 and then 12,000. We hit our first bite before the edge at some high spots and a true smoker was hooked. The line came off the down rigger and stayed bent but was only just crawling off the reel as I grabbed it and checked the set. As the guest on board hardly knew the line had been knocked down I yelled to have him come get the rod. It is second nature to see lines go off and then have the rod in hand before the fish starts its run but it takes time to have that connection with a boat. Its sort of the same in your own car, there are noises that you are familiar with and once in a while you hear something new and it startles you the moment you hear or feel it. The guest came to get the rod and I plopped it in his belt just in time for him to feel exactly what he was paying to experience. Ten if not twelve solid seconds of screaming line going behind the boat giving evidence to one of two possible species we had just hooked up, Wahoo or Kingfish. If you have never been spooled like this before it is a frightening and antsy moment. You feel helpless and you don't know what to do, you know if that fish can keep up the endurance he will set himself free although he will have quite a long leash until the hook corrodes away or slips out after a week. In fact, there is one thing you must do in this situation. Enjoy the moment and do nothing. Seriously, you just smile and watch the reel spin because you know that as fast as that line is going out it is going to be spooled back much slower so save your breath now. You do nothing but smile because you know you have hooked a great fish, something strong enough to pull 50lbs of drag for over ten seconds. This fish turned out to be a 30 pound smoker, a Kingfish. Gaffed and on board we all got to feel that satisfying exuberance that comes from battling an adversary and winning. Lines back in the water and away we went only to have the same scenario happen twenty minutes later although a shorter initial run the smaller Kingfish was worked back to the boat with methodical patience and instruction to the guest, lean back and pull the rod up then drop it down and reel in the difference created, lean back and rod up, lean down and crank the line in. About 30 yards away we saw our first flashes of silvery blue color and knew it was another Kingfish and he was tired, having been worked over for the last ten minutes. 25 yards now and that is when my strategy changed abruptly, "crank, crank, crank, reel, reel, forget the up and down motion just get that fish in now!" A brown menace had appeared behind our target and was swaggering about 10 yards behind the king. It was making a serpentine right behind the king as we were still moving 2 or 3 knots through the water. Then it disappeared and I knew we were done with this battle with just 15 yards to go. "He's not fighting me anymore I'm getting it in Josh." "I know, we just got sharked." I gaffed the corpse and our king came on board surprisingly whole as the shark had only taken the tail off our fish! The brown machine stayed 10 yards behind the boat for about twenty seconds before deciding wisely that his meal was now ours. The bite was so clean, so perfect and so swift that the 18 pound king was still flopping around the deck. What an efficient creature the shark is to do such damage with such little effort. Later in the day we filled out the fish box with three nice blackfin tuna, a skipjack tuna, and two peanut 7 pound mahi!