|
Mr. Carkington
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: Not all that wander are lost.
Posts: 10,882
|
The Great Blue River
This is an excerpt from an article written by Ernest Hemingway in 1949. We have some folks here who are Marlin/Broadbill curious, I know I am. With this bit of prose Papa takes you to Cuba and describes a day on his boat Pilar. He is leaving the harbor and passing the Morro. They are fishing already and often hook up as they leave the harbor headed for the Gulfstream ... the Great Blue River as Papa calls it.
"Ordinarily, fishing out of Havana, we get a line out with a Japanese feather squid and a strip of pork rind on the hook, while we are still running out of the harbor. This is for Tarpon, which feed around the fishing smacks anchored along the Morro Castle-Cabanas side of the channel, and for kingfish, which are often in the mouth of the main ship channel and over the bar, where the bottom fishermen catch snappers just outside the Morro.
This bait is fished on a twelve-foot No. 10 piano-wire leader from a 6/0 reel, full of fifteen-thread line and from a nine-ounce Tycoon tip. The biggest tarpon I ever caught with this rig weighed 135 pounds. We have hooked some that were much bigger but lost them to outgoing or incoming ships, to port launches, to bumboats and to the anchor chains of the fishing smacks. You can plead with or threaten launches and bumboats when you have a big fish on and they are headed so that they will cut him off. But there is nothing you can do when a big tanker, or a cargo ship, or a liner is coming down the channel. So we usually put out this line when we can see the channel is clear and nothing is coming out; or after seven o'clock in the evening when ships will usually not be entering the harbor due to the extra port charges made after that hour. ..."
And then a little farther out
"By now as you have cleared the harbor, Gregorio has the meat line out and is getting the outrigger baits out and, it being a good day, you are getting flying fish up and pushing to the eastward into the breeze. The first marlin you see can show within ten minutes of leaving your moorings, and so close to the Morro that you can still see the curtains on the light.
He may come behind the big, white wooden teaser that is zig-zagging and diving between the two inside lines. He may show behind an outrigger bait that is bouncing and jumping over the water. Or he may come racing from the side, slicing a wake through the dark water, as he comes for the feather.
When you see him from the flying bridge he will look first brown and then dark purple as he rises in the water, and his pectoral fins, spread wide as he comes to feed, will be a light lavender color and look like widespread wings as he drives just under the surface. He will look, in the sea, more like a huge submarine bird than a fish.
Gregorio, if he sees him first will shout, "Feesh!, Feesh, Papa, feesh!"
If you see him first you leave the wheel, or turn it over to Mary, your wife, and go to the stern end of the house and say "Feesh" as calmly as possible to Gregorio, who has always seen him by then, too, and you lean over and he hands you up the rod the marlin is coming for, or if he is after the teaser, he hands you up the rod with the feather and pork rind on.
All right, he is after the the teaser and you are racing-in the feather. Gregorio is keeping the teaser, a tapering, cylindrical piece of wood two feet long, with a curve cut in it's head that makes it dive and dance when towed, away from the marlin. The marlin is rushing it and and trying to grab it. His bill comes out of the water as he drives toward it. But Gregorio keeps it just out of his reach. If he pulled it all the way in, the fish might go down. So he is playing him as a bullfighter might play a bull, keeping the lure just out of his range, and yet never denying it to him, while you race-in the feather.
Mary is saying, "Isn't he beautiful? Oh, Papa, look at his stripes and that color and the color of his wings. Look at him!"
"I'm looking at him," you say, and you have the feather now abreast of the teaser, and Gregorio sees it and flicks the teaser clear, and the marlin sees the feather. The big thing that he chased, and that looked and acted like a crippled fish, is gone. But here is a squid, his favorite food, instead.
The marlin's bill comes clear out of the water as he hits the feather and you see his open mouth and, as he hits it, you lower the rod that you have held as high as you could, so the feather goes out of sight into his mouth. You see it go in, and the mouth shuts and you see him turn, shining silver, his stripes showing as he turns.
As he turns his headyou hit him, striking hard, hard and hard again, to set the hook. Then, if he starts to run instead of jumping you hit him three or four more times more to make sure, because he might just be holding feather, hook and all, tight in his jaws and running away with it, still unhooked. Then he feels the hook and jumps clear. He will jump straight up all clear of the water, shaking himself. He will jump straight and stiff as a beaked bar of silver. He will jump high and long, shedding drops of water as he comes out, and making a splash like a shell hitting when he enters the water again. And he will jump, and jump, and jump, sometimes on one side of the boat, then crossing to the other so fast you see the belly of the line whipping through the water, fast as a racing ski turn. ..."
I might have to try that sometime, sounds like fun. BTW if you did not know this, we have striped marlin here too .... about 30 miles west of Depoe Bay, in another big blue river of ocean that runs along our coast. At the edge of the continental shelf, where it drops to the abyss.
[ 08-05-2003, 02:21 PM: Message edited by: Pilar ]
|
Ragnar
I'm in. Fish with pointy bills? Sure. Why not? Let's do it!
Team Swordfish!
Linear Mode
