Something Fishy

by Derek Hansen

  ‘Do me a favour. Don’t ask,’ said Captain Pete.

  ‘More Negras!’ called Low Gear Joe. ‘And make sure they’re cold.’

  ‘But, senor,’ said the waiter. ‘You are drinking them faster than we can cool them.’

  ‘How about that?’ said Low Gear Joe. ‘Got any cold Pacifico?’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘Better here than in the fridge.’

  ‘Si, senor.’

  ‘I’m going to win the Calima,’ said Karl suddenly.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Captain Pete.‘Wait for Cabo.’

  ‘The captain’s right. Don’t waste your time even thinking about it,’ said Low Gear Joe.

  ‘I’m running hot and I’m going to win the Calima,’ persisted Karl.

  ‘No gringo wins the Calima,’ said Captain Pete. ‘Haven’t you been listening? No gringo wins the Calima! Never has, never will. If you want to come second to a bunch of pangeros in their pissy, narrow-gutted pangas, you go ahead. But you’re going to come second.’

  ‘No!’ said Karl fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, his new friends were momentarily in danger of sobering up. ‘I’ve listened to you, now you listen to me. I’m going to win. Whatever it takes, I’m going to win. I’m never coming second again in my life.’

  Three weeks later Karl stood dockside at Barra de Navidad, one of fifty-four contestants, waiting for a wooden chip with his entry number and the signal which would begin the five-day event. Of the fifty-four boats taking part, only ten belonged to gringos, six to wealthy chilangos and the remaining thirty-eight to pangeros. While the odds favoured the local fishermen numerically, Karl couldn’t see how the pangeros’ slim, outboard-powered open boats could possibly compete with his Billfisher with her high tower, fish finders, radar, GPS video plotter and water temperature sensors. The pangas were rarely longer than seven metres, offered their crew of two no shelter or protection from sun, wind or rain and carried no equipment. Only a handful even bothered to carry a radio or a compass, despite the fact that they often fished up to eighty kilometres from shore. The pangeros were hard men who trusted their lives to their ability to read the weather and trusted their livelihood to their ability to guess where fish would be. Bad weather, mishaps and the price of fuel ensured they never did much more than keep their families housed, fed and clothed in the most basic fashion. Winning the tournament offered their only way of getting ahead, short of running drugs across to the Baja Peninsula. Karl figured the only thing they had in their favour was local knowledge and patience.

  But even so.

  The organisers must also have thought the locals were too disadvantaged so, to even things up, they ruled that no boat could use more than three rods, which was all the pangas could fish at one time.

  But even so.

  Karl turned his attention to the chilangos. Their boats and equipment were flashy and doubtless expensive, but Karl saw his rivals from Mexico City as soft, beneficiaries of wealth they’d played little part in amassing. To him they were big boys playing with their big toys and Karl doubted any of them would finish the day sober. The other gringos were not unlike himself: eager, earnest and probably a touch inexperienced. Nevertheless, Karl fancied his chances. Even on the run over from Buena Vista to Barra de Navidad on the eastern shore of the Sea of Cortez, he’d managed to hook-up to three blue marlin and bring two up onto the double. The biggest had run close to two hundred kilos and he’d caught it just fifty kilometres short of port. There was no doubt about it. He was running hot.

  So was the water. Blue marlin like the water temperature to be at least twenty-seven degrees Celsius and on their way across from Buena Vista, Gerardo had found a current from the south running at twenty-eight degrees. That was where they’d caught their big blue. That was where they were heading as soon as they were given the wooden paddle with their number.

  Karl glanced over at the prizes while last-minute instructions were delivered in Spanish. First prize for the biggest blue marlin was an immaculate Chevrolet pick-up, with a V8 motor, lowered suspension, tandem rear wheels and at least two dozen Calima Tequila logos bedecking its brilliant red paintwork. It was precisely the sort of vehicle Karl had avoided owning or even being seen in throughout his entire Midwestern life. The prize meant nothing to him, only winning the tournament. However, Gerardo had fallen in love with the truck and Karl had promised to give it to him once they’d won.

  First prize for the biggest sailfish was a one-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower four-stroke Honda outboard. Gerardo had also fallen in love with that even though he had no boat to attach it to. First prizes for the biggest yellowfin tuna and biggest dorado were both seventy-horsepower Yamaha outboards. Gerardo was generous enough to suggest that Jose might like one of the Yamahas.

  ‘I give it to my father,’ said Jose.‘The motor on his panga is old.’

  All their dreams and plans were predicated on winning and, as Karl completed his sweep of the opposition and prizes, he thought he had as good a chance of winning as anybody. And a better chance than most.

  The first dent in Karl’s confidence came when the pangeros were given their wooden paddles the instant the instructions were completed in Spanish. He watched them race for their pangas and speed off down the channel while he and the rest of the gringos gritted their teeth and waited for the rules to be read to them in English. The pangeros had been gone half an hour before Billfisher even made it out into the channel leading to the open sea. Maybe this was what Captain Pete was trying to warn him about, thought Karl angrily.

  ‘Most of the pangeros have gone northwest or west,’ said Gerardo.‘I think we should head southwest.’

  ‘What about him?’ Karl pointed to a panga which had latched onto them and hung off about four hundred metres astern on the port side.

  ‘Maybe he thinks we know something,’ said Gerardo. ‘Maybe he wants to share the benefit of our equipment.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Karl, not convinced. The panga gave him a bad feeling.

  They motored for three hours at close to maximum speed until they picked up the warm current from the south. They’d trolled lures behind them but Karl hadn’t expected a hit. Gerardo had convinced him that if there were blue marlin about they’d be in the warm current. Blue marlin were the only fish that interested him. Blue marlin were the biggest fish and earned the biggest prize. Anything else was, well, secondary.

  ‘Ballena!’ screamed Jose suddenly, from high in the tower. A torrent of Spanish followed.

  ‘What?’ said Karl.‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Whale,’ said Gerardo.

  ‘What do we want with a whale?’ said Karl.

  ‘It is a dead whale, patrón,’ said Gerardo, setting course for it.

  ‘What do we want with a dead whale?’ said Karl.

  ‘Dorado and marlin, patrón, they gather beneath dead whales. Look, our friend has seen it now.’

  Karl spun around to see the panga that had been tracking them zoom past, cranking every knot out of its oversized outboard.

  ‘Damn!’ said Karl. Maybe this was the sort of thing Captain Pete had tried to warn him about.

  ‘Get your belt on, patrón,’ said Gerardo.‘Watch what Jose does and cast your caballito as close to the whale as you can.’

  ‘What about our friend?’

  ‘If he gets in the way I will accidentally run him over.’

  Karl looked for the smile on Gerardo’s face but saw no trace of humour. He dropped down the steps from the flying bridge and out onto the rear deck. Jose had already threaded hooks through the cheeks of two bait fish. They were swimming nervously in the bait tank.

  ‘God help us,’ said Karl. They were still one hundred metres from the whale when the wind brought the smell of decay to them. Jose screwed up his face and smiled.

  ‘Look,’ said Karl. Both men in the panga had hooked up.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ called Gerardo.‘We will take the other side, upwind.’

  Karl waited impatiently as Gerardo put
Billfisher in position. Suddenly his big boat no longer seemed such an advantage. The panga was much faster, more manoeuvrable and had virtually no windage.

  ‘Cast, patrón!’ screamed Gerardo.

  Karl set his feet, took a moment to feel the weight of the fish on the heavy fifty-pound rod and cast. All the hours of practice in the backyard of his home in Salina paid off in that one cast. His caballito landed within a metre of the dead whale’s flanks and immediately wished it was anywhere else. It panicked, and in panicking became a magnet for every predator nearby. Jose’s fish was still flying through the air when Karl’s bait was swallowed. Line stripped off his freewheeling spool.

  ‘One,’ counted Karl.

  ‘Two, three, four, five, six!’

  He set the drag and struck hard and struck again, the heavy rod high above his head. The shock when the hook set made Karl think he’d hooked into a high-speed interstate truck. The rod arched and line crackled off the reel at an outrageous rate. Was he running hot or what? Yes, he was running hot!

  ‘Got to be a blue!’ he cried ecstatically.

  ‘Maybe, patrón,’ said Gerardo.

  ‘Keep the tip up.

  ‘Short stroke.

  ‘Not too quick.’

  Karl corrected his stance and concentrated on making the rod do the work. But for every metre of line he recovered the fish took ten.

  ‘It has to be a blue!’ said Karl.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gerardo.‘Jose is on a dorado.’

  ‘Don’t let it get in the way of my blue,’ said Karl.

  He fought his marlin, dimly aware of Jose battling his dorado alongside him, finally taking it on the trace and sinking the gaff. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why his skipper and deckie were messing around with a dorado while he had a marlin on, and a probable trophy fish at that.

  His fish angled away from the dead whale as though blaming it for its predicament. Gerardo pursued it, keeping it at a right angle to the boat, turning so that the fish lay dead astern when it ceased its run.

  ‘Wind, patrón,’ called Gerardo as he began to back up.‘This is a tournament. We can’t take all day.’

  Karl wound furiously.

  ‘What if it’s green when we try to gaff it?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s my problem,’ said Gerardo.

  Karl glanced at Jose alongside and found him holding a heavy wooden club. Suddenly the prospect of an angry green marlin didn’t seem quite as frightening.

  ‘Hey, what are they doing?’ said Karl.

  The panga, which had been following them, had taken up station one hundred and fifty metres astern and the occupants were observing his battle with the marlin.

  ‘Tell them to piss off,’ said Karl.

  ‘It’s a free country,’ said Gerardo.

  Karl’s marlin suddenly broke clear of the water and his shoulders slumped. Unbelievably, his blue marlin was only a dorado.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, and thumped his reel hand against the transom.

  ‘What are you doing, patrón?’ screamed Gerardo. ‘It’s a trophy fish! A trophy fish, patrón! Wind! Wind!’

  Trophy fish? Karl returned to his task with renewed vigour. For the first time the prospect of winning more than the main category dawned on him. That would be something to tell Captain Pete and Low Gear Joe. They didn’t think he could win one category. Karl wound like a madman, now determined to win every category. That would show them. That would really show them. Alongside him Jose had put down his club in favour of his gaff. He had a smile on his face as though the seventy-horsepower Yamaha was already his.

  ‘Steady!’ said Gerardo.

  Once Jose had the dorado on the trace, Gerardo left the controls, grabbed the gaff and helped Jose boat the fish.

  ‘Look at the size of it!’ said Gerardo. ‘I have never seen dorado this big before.’

  While they stood admiring their catch, they missed seeing the skipper of the panga pick up his microphone and send details of their catch back to the marina. With their radio away in the flying bridge, they also missed hearing it. Karl didn’t realise it at the time, but that was another advantage the smaller pangas had over his fifty-nine-footer. Jammed in their tiny cockpit, the pangeros missed nothing.

  Gerardo mounted the tower so he could check the water around the whale. He saw plenty of dorado and what he was sure was a big wahoo, but no sign at all of marlin. Certain that they wouldn’t catch a bigger dorado than they had already, they motored away, following the warm current with three lures out for the elusive blue marlin. The panga tagged along behind.

  Karl caught two sailfish and a wahoo before Gerardo turned Billfisher for home to meet the five o’clock deadline for weigh-in. Neither of the sailfish was big enough to justify keeping and Jose released them. He filleted the wahoo and put one of the fillets in the fridge for dinner. Once it was clear they were headed back to the marina, their escort powered away ahead of them.

  As they entered the channel leading into the Laguna de Navidad, Gerardo pulled alongside the organising committee’s panga where Jose exchanged their wooden paddle for a red disc, which signified that they’d returned inside the allotted time. They’d listened to the radio all the way in and, as far as they could tell, only one blue marlin had been captured, a modest fish around one hundred and twenty kilos. Someone had caught a good-sized sailfish around fifty-five kilos but nobody had sounded particularly excited about catching dorado.

  As his dorado was hauled up to the scales, Karl was confident that his fish would set a mark that would not be beaten. From the reaction of the other game fishermen and pangeros, they seemed to agree. He could tell that they were in awe of the sheer size of his fish. A cheer went up as the pointer on the scales spun around to forty-four point three kilos. Karl accepted congratulatory handshakes from other gringo fishermen and chilangos. Smiling Mexican girls with outrageously dyed yellow hair and wearing the sponsor’s T-shirts surrounded him for publicity photos. Karl’s chest swelled with pride. If this was what being a winner was like, he wanted more of it.

  Other fish were hauled up to the scales but none made the impact of his magnificent dorado. Just as darkness loomed and fishermen and crews alike were falling victim to the sponsor’s generous donation of free tequila, a local fisherman presented another dorado to be weighed. It was big, but even in the poor light Karl could see that his fish was bigger.

  ‘Patrón, something is wrong,’ hissed Gerardo.‘That fish has no colour. That fish has been dead for days.’

  Karl looked on in disbelief as the pointer on the scales spun around to forty-five kilos, point seven of a kilo heavier than his fish. How could that be? The dorado was clearly smaller than his. Pangeros raced to congratulate the lucky fisherman and the golden-haired girls found a new hero to be photographed with.

  ‘Look, patrón, look at its belly,’ said Gerardo indignantly. ‘See how it overhangs? They have stuffed it full of lead weights. I am going to take a close look at it. I bet they have sewn up its lips so the weights don’t fall out.’

  But Gerardo couldn’t take a closer look. The pangeros closed ranks so tightly around the fish that he struggled to find a way past them. By the time he made it to the scales the dorado had been taken down and removed.

  ‘I’m going to protest,’ said Karl.‘This is outrageous.’

  He made his way angrily to the committee table.

  ‘That dorado is ineligible,’ he said. ‘Look at its colour. Anyone can see that it has been dead for days.’

  ‘Senor, unfortunately not everyone has a fine boat like yours,’ said the official. ‘When you catch a fine fish, you can take it on board and keep it under shelter so the sun does not suck all the water from its body. Pangeros are not so fortunate. Their pangas are small and have no shade. When the sun sucked the water out of this fish it also sucked out the colour.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Karl. ‘Wet burlap. The pangeros cover their fish in wet burlap to protect them from the sun. Anyway, that dorado was not
iceably smaller than mine. And if the sun had sucked out all its water, as you say, then it would have weighed much less.’

  ‘Maybe this fish had just had a meal of caballitos,’ said the official. ‘Maybe his belly was full. Who knows why one fish weighs more than another?’

  ‘I want that fish opened up and the contents of its belly examined,’ said Karl. He had to work hard to keep his voice calm in the face of the official’s deliberate obstruction, but his anger was building dangerously.‘I insist.’

  ‘Unfortunately the fish has gone,’ said the official. ‘As organisers we reserve the right to keep the biggest fish and sell it to offset costs. That fish has already been sold.’

  ‘It will still be here somewhere on the marina,’ insisted Karl.‘There hasn’t been time to take it away.’

  ‘So what?’ said the official. ‘The fish is no longer ours to cut open. It is sold. Now, if you have no more questions, I would like to get on with my duties.’

  To Karl’s astonishment the official rose from behind the committee table and walked away. Now he understood what Captain Pete had tried to warn him about.

  ‘It’s blatant cheating,’ said Karl into his cell phone. ‘That pangero cheated and the committee went along with him. They deliberately turned a blind eye.’

  ‘That’s what they do,’ said Captain Pete sympathetically. He was anchored in Bahia de Los Muertos, still fishing the rise south of Cerralvo.

  ‘If they allow stuff like that, how can I possibly win?’ said Karl.

  ‘You can’t,’ said Captain Pete.‘No gringo can.’

  ‘But it’s dishonest.’

  ‘That’s what it is.’

  ‘They can’t get away with it.’

  ‘They can and they do.’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Karl. ‘Somehow I’m going to get even.’

  ‘To do that you’ll have to beat them at their own game,’ said Captain Pete.

  ‘I don’t cheat,’ said Karl.

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Captain Pete.

  The following morning was a re-run of the first. Once again the committee contrived to give the pangeros a good half-hour’s start. Gerardo set a course due southwest to pick up the warm current. Despite being robbed of a certain trophy for best dorado, Karl felt optimistic. When somebody caught a big marlin the word spread, and it would be difficult for a pangero to have caught one prior to the start of the tournament and to have stored it in a freezer. Even if the pangero managed to sneak a big marlin ashore, where would he find a freezer big enough to store it? And how would he defrost it? Fish the size of a big blue would take days to thaw out and, by then, not even the committee could ignore the smell. As for loading a fish with lead weights, Karl doubted anyone would try that trick again. Marlin attracted too much attention and were the subject of too many photographs; no one could get away with sewing a marlin’s mouth shut.