Catching fish while sailing

TONIGHT I SHALL MAKE GRAVLOX for our annual party on the day after New Year’s Day. I shall pour coarse salt and new-ground pepper onto filets of local salmon and smother it all with bunches of dill. And then, while it matures in the fridge for two days I shall think about all the fish I’ve caught in my sailing career.

I make no claim to be an angler, although I’ve always wanted to be one. I’ve always admired people who can cast a line back and forth, flashing through the air, and  land the fly gently on the water in some shady pool. But my method of fishing is much cruder than that. For many hundreds of miles under sail I have simply towed a shiny lure astern, inviting anything in the sea to take a bite. I keep it all very simple. No rod to get in the way of everything. Just a simple Penn reel clamped to the pushpit rail. No gaff. No net. And no sportsmanship involved. Everything is so strong and simple that anything I catch can be hauled straight into the cockpit.

When I was a kid we lived in a house close to the sea, and every year the mackerel would swim into our little bay. Great shoals of them. I would row out in a small dinghy and catch one on my hand line. I’d cut him up for bait and catch a dozen more. They were always ravenous. When I had a fair load, I’d row down to the little fish market in town and offer my catch for sale.

I never sold any because everybody and his aunt was out there catching mackerel. The market was flooded with mackerel. You could almost persuade some fishmonger to pay you to take your catch away, because the glut of mackerel was forcing prices down. So, every year, I would row back home and dispose of my cargo on the way, saving only a few fishes for the cats, and perhaps a supper or two for our family. It was a lesson in retail economics that shouldn’t have taken long to learn, but I was never disappointed by my failure to make a fortune from mackerel . It was the thrill of catching each one on a hand line that kept me at it.

In later years I fished as I crossed oceans. I lost quite a few spinners to sharks, but still managed to drag aboard bonito, dorado, barracuda, and salmon, all of which made fine eating, and one notable puffer fish, which I knew to be poisonous. I was saved the bother of taking him off the hook by a shark, which swallowed him whole along with my lure and hook and six inches of stainless-steel trace wire.  I have often wondered whether puffer fish are as poisonous for sharks as they are for humans.

In any case, tonight I shall be thinking of Burl and Abigail Romick. We met them in 1999, when my wife June and I were exploring the wilderness of British Columbia in our 25-foot sailboat. They were sailing a C&C 35-footer, a Landfall, called Wind Song.

We came across them near the northern end of Vancouver Island while we were sheltering from a northwesterly gale in Bull Harbor, an area described with some accuracy in the Sailing Directions as “remote.” And very windy, as it turned out, even in summer.

We linked up with Wind Song again down south in Barkley Sound. And there the Romicks treated us to a gourmet meal built around a delicious dish they called gravlox.

They made it from a salmon they had caught. It was soft, sweet, salty, peppery, and tangy with dill. After five weeks of canned food and cruising rations, it was a sensation. Our jaded tastebuds were clapping their little hands and yelling with delight.

Every year since, we’ve made a gravlox lunch on the day after New Year, and invited a few close friends around to share the delights we experienced in Barkley Sound. There will be champagne, of course. And the toast is always the same: “To Burl and Abigail.”

Today’s Thought

Fishing is much more than fish . . . It is the great occasion when we may return to the free simplicity of our forefathers.

— Herbert Hoover, 31st U.S. President

Tailpiece

“Psychoanalysis is a lot of hokum.”
“What makes you say that?”
"Well, I’ve been having analysis for six weeks and my shrink says I’m in love with my umbrella.”
“That’s just nuts.”
“That’s what I told him. Admiration, possibly — and I must admit we have built up a sincere affection for each other — but love? That’s crazy.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

A fillet to remember

I HAVEN'T FISHED from sailboats as much as I would have liked to.  I have often trailed a spinner, which has caught various kinds of fish from salmon to barracuda, but those catches have been few and far between. All too often I find myself too immersed in the sailing of the boat to bother with fishing. And there's always the thought lurking in the back of my mind that if I do put out a lure and catch a fish, I'd better be prepared for blood, guts, and fish scales everywhere. Mucho messo.

And there's also a story that put me off fishing for a long time. When I was a teenager I met Jean Gau, one of the post-war pioneer singlehanded circumnavigators.  He was taking leave from his job as chef at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, and he was sailing Atom, a 30-foot Tahiti ketch.  He was famous for having ridden out Hurricane Carrie, which sank the nearby sail-training bark Pamir, with the loss of 80 lives.  Gau said he lashed Atom's tiller to leeward, stripped her of all sail, and left her to her own devices in 120 knot winds while he shut himself below.

But his fishing story concerned his crossing of the Indian Ocean, from Australia to Durban, South Africa.  On this passage he grew interested a  group of fish that followed Atom day after day, in the shade close under her stern.  Every morning he would look for them, and soon began to recognize the bigger ones.  After 10 days or so, with his fresh stores running out, Gau decided to try to catch one of them.  He tempted them with a spinning lure, but none of his faithful band of followers was interested.

Then he tied a small piece of white cloth to a large hook and immediately got a taker.  He hauled in a nice-sized fish and sprang into action straight away with his chef's knife.  There was no point in trying to keep the whole fish because he had no refrigeration, so he expertly cut a large slice from one side and threw the fish overboard. He enjoyed a delicious fish supper that evening.

Next morning he went aft to check on his companions and there amongst them, swimming steadily along,  was a fish with a large white gash where his side should have been.

Gau said that butchered fish continued to swim with Atom for another few days.  "He haunted me," said Gau.  "I was continually aware of him out there, keeping station so faithfully." Then all the fish disappeared together, and Atom was once more alone on the wide ocean.

Today's Thought

Can the fish love the fisherman?
— Martial, Epigrams

Tailpiece

Did you hear about the sailor who drowned in a bowl of muesli?  A strong currant pulled him in.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The non-sport of fishing

IT’S LUCKY FOR FISH that water isn’t more transparent. I think we’d catch a lot more of them if we could see them down there, thumbing their noses at us. Of course, what I do isn’t really fishing. At least, it’s not the sport of fishing. What I do is hook ’em and winch ’em in.

It just so happens that sailboat speed is a good trolling speed for many species of game fish. Five knots or so is a speed that invites a slow-thinking fish to snatch instinctively at bait whisked past his nose. It’s fast enough that he doesn’t have time to think and inspect the lure closely for signs of life. As long as it looks vaguely like something he’s eaten before, and wobbles like something he’s eaten before, he’ll lunge for it. Five knots is also slow enough for him to react. It’s not so fast that the lure doesn’t even register on his tiny brain. Five knots is about right.

As I said, I don’t fish for sport. I simply bolt my Penn reel straight onto the tubing of the aft pulpit, which happens to be about the same diameter as a regular fishing rod.

I just let out 150 feet or so of 50-pound nylon hawser with a flashy lure on the end, and set the ratchet. I used to know the rule for how much weight you need to sink the lure so many feet at which speed, but like so many other things in life, it’s gone now. There’s only so much I can stuff into my cranium, and if I shove something new in today, something from the past will fall out the other side.

So I tow the lure with a big treble hook and I wait for the noise and I winch in my supper. Of course, this doesn’t always happen as planned. Actually, the last fish I caught was a salmon up north on Vancouver Island in 1999. Probably illegally, too, since I didn’t have a license. I think I can safely reveal that now, because the statute of limitations has run out.

Mostly, though, I just tow the lure and clean the seaweed off it every day or two and have soup for supper. It saves a lot of mess in the cockpit.

Today’s Thought
All men are equal before fish.
— Herbert Hoover, NY Times, 9 Aug 64

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #52
Diesel exhausts (2). Blue smoke. When the engine’s own lubricating oil is being burned, the smoke is blue. This can be the result of worn piston rings, valve guides, or oil seals. The oil can comes from an overfilled air filter or too much oil in the crankcase.

Tailpiece
A tourist on safari in Africa came across a man struggling hand-to-hand with a huge lion. Nearby, the man’s wife stood calmly with a rifle in her hand.
“Why don’t you shoot the beast?” the tourist asked.
“I will if I have to,” she said, “but I’m hoping the lion will save me the trouble.”