Denizens of the Deep

by Philip Wylie

  People do it on purpose—even though the deed requires much hunting, as a rule, for marlin, like all great, voracious game animals, are not abundant—and even though the finding of a marlin in the sea, the luring of said fish to the bait, and the hooking of same, by no means guarantees the catch. I ought to know. Before I actually brought my own first blue to boat, I had hooked and fought—for a longer or shorter time—eight others. And a great many years had passed between the first and the ninth.

  To catch a blue marlin in the latitudes where I live, the latitudes of south Florida and Bimini, in the British Bahamas, you troll from a conventional fishing boat—one with sturdy outriggers and stout tackle. The lightest line recommended for the beginner is twenty-four-thread, which breaks under a strain of seventy-two pounds. But thirty-nine-thread, with a breaking strain of 117 pounds, is better. And most people start out with fifty-four-thread line. It is a good idea for the angler to know his own breaking strain, besides. For it generally takes an hour or two—or maybe three or four—to lick a blue marlin with rod and reel. It will be amongst the more onerous periods of the angler’s life. A period filled with excitement—one during which carelessness can be extremely dangerous. The sport is not recommended for persons who are unsure of the state of their hearts, backs, biceps and general morale. More than one man who fancied himself in adequate condition has died of heart failure after an encounter with a marlin.

  The bait for sailfish is a mullet, a balao, or a cut strip of fish belly the length of a man’s hand. The bait most prized for marlin in these latitudes is a bonefish, whole—a two- to five- pounder, with six- and eight-pounders acceptable. The bonefish itself is regarded by tens of thousands of anglers as the finest light-tackle quarry the sea affords. But, in the marlin quest, a bonefish is only bait. That gives some idea.

  To give the rest of the idea would require a convocation of all the anglers who have ever—by accident or deliberate intent—“hung” a blue marlin. Or a white. I can offer only what I’ve seen, experienced, or heard from fishermen and fishing guides whose habit is complete honesty and even understatement, a common practice amongst sports fishermen, contrary to the tired gag about their exaggerations.

  Skip, then, the eight marlin that I hooked and lost. Skip many years of luckless fishing. And skip back ten years or so to a day off the Florida Keys when, with my wife and some friends, we were taking dead aim for blue marlin in the Sea Queen, captained by Art Wills. I had heard, from Pan American pilots, that at a certain point off the Keys, in a certain time of year (and don’t bother writing to ask where and when; it’s still my secret), great numbers of marlin could be seen from the air. We were down there, then, on a warm and windy day—blue sky, Caribbean clouds phalanxing overhead to make a regular and welcome interruption of the tropical sunshine—with two big rods and reels in the fighting chairs and two bonefish banging along astern on lines that led from the outriggers.

  Every time these baits were yanked from a wave top they came down with splash enough for a normal good strike. These splashes brought myriad false alerts to our friends, who were novices. To make our tenseness greater, we occasionally saw dead or injured mackerel. It looked as if some big fishes had been feeding in mackerel schools—fishes that clubbed first with their bills and then turned to feed. Marlin, for instance. It looked, that is to say, as if there was substance in the tip I’d had from the pilots.

  This substance became reality when the mate, at the controls on top of the cabin, suddenly yelled, “Here he comes—your side, Mr. Wylie!”

  And there, indeed, he came. I had a glimpse of a black bill slashing in the purple water behind my bait. I saw the high-standing dorsal. Underneath it was a frighteningly big shadow. A mouth opened—it seemed as big as a coal scuttle. My bonefish was engulfed. The line whipped out of the clothespin high on the outrigger and the big “V” of slack fell into the sea. This slack gives the marlin (as it does the sailfish) the impression that he has stunned his quarry and furnishes him time enough, thereafter, as the boat moves on, to devour what he has hit.

  I leaped into the fighting chair and buckled on the harness—just in time. The slack came up and I struck, not with my arms, as one does for sailfish, but with my back and shoulders, across which stretched the broad belt of a harness, fixed to the reel. I struck three times. The marlin began responding immediately. I wished that some of my trout-angling friends who are accustomed to a run across a thirty-foot pool and under a two-foot waterfall could have been there. For my marlin beelined away from the boat, at top speed and without stopping or turning, for five hundred straight yards!

  When he did turn, he turned up. At a distance of a little more than a quarter of a mile, he dived into the air, twisting, writhing, falling, throwing spray like an air-launched torpedo and catapulting back into the atmosphere again. Six jumps and he decided to try the straight pull again. The skipper cut the boat around and gave chase. We ran for a mile or more, neck and neck. Or possibly, in that furious mile, I got back a little line. Unfortunately, from the standpoint of the marlin, this one decided on a new course. He took off at right angles, and then I did gain line.

  In ten minutes—or fifteen—or twenty—he stopped dead. For five more minutes he lay beneath the tossing surface of the indigo sea and merely shook his head. Every time he shook it, I was lifted out of my seat—and, of course, dropped back with all the force that gravity invests in the sudden release of support. The marlin leaped again. For fifty yards or so he ran along on his tail, throwing a wake like an outboard racer and eying us bitterly. Then he bored straight down.

  The Sea Queen was ten miles offshore; the Gulf Stream ran deep there. But this particular marlin sounded until he hit the bottom. That fact we were able to prove later for, on his belly, were deep scratches from the coral reef.

  Fighting a marlin that has sounded is something like trying to keep a mineshaft elevator from falling deeper into its pit with a winch that slips. The strain is incessant, the weight tremendous, and whenever you reel a few precious yards of line onto the spindle, something gives, and down the fish goes again, taking all you gained, or more, or—if you are lucky and the fish is tiring, perhaps a little less. I have hooked marlin that went down a couple of thousand feet and stayed there, dogging around. I have fought them there for hours, through thunder storms that snapped down lightning on the surrounding sea, through stinging rain squalls, into darkness—fought them, and lost them there, when the line finally broke or some sharp edge of reef cut it in two.

  This marlin, destined to be my first, gave up hunting for safety in the pitch-dark ocean abyss after half an hour. He began a return to the surface that beat my fastest efforts to reel and came out within fifty yards of the boat. Here you will begin to see why I said that marlin are insane.

  The big fish reconnoitered us by means of a few fast-breaking leaps and by greyhounding around our stern. When I got a tight line on him again, he charged the boat.

  There is a considerable dispute amongst not only anglers but scientists as to whether marlin take this rare step on purpose or merely in their random, wild way of getting about. I hold with the “on purpose” school. But, whether with intended malice or with mere blind indignation, the marlin poised himself on the surface, seemed to aim, and came at us like a skip bomb. He caught the Sea Queen squarely in the stern, too. There was a shock. The sound of sea and wind was louder than what must have been a sharp crack. For the marlin’s bill point rammed into the mahogany planking of the stern and some three inches of it broke off and stayed there, like a spike, driven deep.

  This outraged the fish; he lathered the sea in our immediate vicinity. Something like an hour and a half had passed, by this time. I knew I was shot. But, at lucky long last, I was battling a blue marlin that was even more spent. I began bringing him in the final, rugged hundred feet or so. The mate made a snatch at the leader wire and got it. The skipper ran to his side. Both waited for a favorable cant of the Sea Queen and then, suddenly, my marlin’s head showed
over the gunwale, his broken bill held by rippling human muscle. The despatching club was applied and in he came.

  During the battle I had taken it for granted that I was fighting a monster—a five-hundred-pounder, or a bigger one. Maybe even a record-breaker. On the scales, the fish weighed 237 pounds. Not exactly a baby marlin, but a child marlin, at best.

  The shattered stub of the bill protruding from the Sea Queen’s stern attracted more attention among veteran anglers than the catch. Captain Wills cut it off flush, sanded it down and varnished it. Thereafter, for many years and until the Sea Queen got a new stern, he showed his passengers the dowellike plug in his mahogany—the imbedded bill of Phil Wylie’s first blue. Only a few weeks before this was written, I saw the Sea Queen turning into Government Cut, homing to Miami after a day’s charter. She was flying another marlin flag—for a white marlin, this time—but I doubt if she’d been rammed again in the battle.

  Most hooked marlin don’t get caught. They are too big and too furious for fishing tackle. But once in a while, a good one gets taken easily. Well, easily in a way. This happened to me the summer before last.

  For three days, I’d been fishing with my daughter and a boy schoolmate off Bimini with no luck. My daughter and her pal were fifteen and their function was merely to watch the great event, but three days of sitting on a boat in fairly choppy water is monotonous, at fifteen, even when the project promises well. Toward the end of the third day they grew restless and my daughter’s pal said annoyedly, “Personally, I think this is about the dullest sport I’ve ever heard of!”

  I knew the sensation. As parent and host, I felt embarrassed. I raised my eyes and sent a silent prayer to whatever gods look after the seas. It must have been a good prayer. Ten minutes later a fair-sized blue cut across our wake at right angles, missed the bait, did a skid turn in the top of a big wave, and came back for another try.

  “What was that?” my daughter asked excitedly.

  “That,” the mate replied calmly, “was a blue marlin, lady. Was, is, and soon will be a dead blue marlin, if we’re lucky.”

  On his second try, the marlin nailed the bonefish. Down dropped the outrigger line. I had slammed into the fighting chair; now I braced myself and struck. Apparently I yanked the bonefish out of his mouth. The marlin came back again, though. I let him have slack line, free-spooling the reel for seven or eight seconds. Then I felt him surge with the bait, and struck again. Out he whistled—350 pounds of sea-splitting, joint-cracking blue dynamite. The kids’ eyes popped, the captain chortled, and the marlin threw a superfast tail-walk halfway around the boat and back again. Then he plunged underwater, rushed a few yards, and stopped.

  I pumped gingerly against him and he ran a few feet. I pumped again—again he ran. This turgid behavior continued for five minutes and then, to my astonishment, I began to gain on the fish. In two more minutes, the swivel was out of water and in another moment, the mate had seized the leader wire. Eight minutes in all!

  “Be careful!” Captain Harold Schmitt yelled, as he came down from the canopy. “That’s a green fish! Hasn’t begun to realize he’s in trouble!”

  But the boating of the fish proceeded. Two Bimini native boys assisted. A tail rope went round the fish. Arms heaved. In came the marlin, half filling the Neptune’s cockpit. Then we saw what had happened. The fish had been hooked in the eye, and resisting the hook evidently distressed it. But, as our skipper stepped forward to administer the coup de grace, the hook dropped out and suddenly the marlin was relieved of pain.

  First, he shook the tail rope. He was entirely free not in the open sea but in the comparatively small cockpit of a fishing cruiser. What happened then is difficult to describe. The two kids took shelter in the cabin and watched from there. The marlin heaved himself into the air a few times and landed on the deck with prodigious, wet thuds. He bent his tail down and up. He happened at the instant to be under a fishing chair; it was hurled high out of its bolts and moorings. Everybody grabbed a club. The boat rocked and pitched in the chop. This slid the enraged fish about in the cockpit. He jerked his head back and forth in wide, lethal arcs and his great, swinging bill constituted a threat of the first magnitude. It could have broken any leg in its way—would have. We ducked around, avoiding bill and tail, whaling at the head when we got a chance.

  But it is one thing to knock a lashed marlin insensible, another to tackle a loose, flopping, bill-swinging, cockpit-filling monster. We hit it dozens of times, bashing its skin, cracking gill plates, cutting it. Blood spattered our clothes and made things so slippery it was nearly impossible to move on the deck. When, finally, we killed the brute, the place looked not as if a fish had been taken there, but as if a hand grenade had gone off. Furniture was blasted about. All five of the men on the boat were smeared with blood. Buckets were flattened and the gear was a mess.

  I turned around at last to the recently bored schoolmate of my daughter. I arrested my panting and made my voice as flat as possible. “Find any excitement in that?”

  I got no immediate answer. Both kids were completely speechless.

  The smaller white marlin is small only by comparison. Fish of this breed have been taken that weighed well over 150 pounds—and bigger ones, of course, have been lost. The white marlin is found year-round in the Florida-Bimini area. Here, too, he irregularly and unpredictably appears in large numbers. And in summertime, off Ocean City, Maryland, he shows up in a still greater abundance. A big white marlin will take a bait trolled for his blue uncle; and any white, if he feels in the mood, will snatch a sailfish bait. This latter fact has provided sailfishermen with an incalculable number of surprises.

  The “white” marlin isn’t white, of course. He resembles the blue in nearly every way; his undersides may be paler, his lavender striping is plain when he first comes out of the water, and his dorsal fin is rounded instead of pointed. Many anglers regard him as, pound-for-pound, the most rugged, enduring and formidable fish in the sea. And his comparative abundance makes it feasible to hunt for him with light tackle. A fisherman can afford to lose a few whites and hope to hook a few more without waiting down long days—and weeks interspersed through years—for another shot. Perhaps only an expert should try for a white marlin with six-thread line and only a slightly daffy expert will try him on three-thread (which has a breaking point of nine pounds), but any fairly competent fisherman with six-hundred or seven-hundred yards of nine-thread (twenty-seven-pound breaking strain) line on his reel will find himself reasonably equipped to battle any but the largest white.

  Fishing for white marlin does not have quite the element of heavyweight contest that is found in blue-marlin fishing. But the excitement of it is intense enough for anybody. I’ve seen it produce a variety of strange results.

  Once, when my wife and some guests and I were trolling off Miami, a heavy wind came up and the seas soon ran a good fifteen feet high. In this loud shambles of wind and water, as we started for home, I hooked a white. The subsequent combat so shook the mate that immediately after we had boated the fish, he lost his hold up topside and fell overboard. One tries at all times not to fall into the Gulf Stream. When it is running a big sea, one should never fall in. For it was a long time before we were able to get even a glimpse of the mate and a still longer time before we could get near enough to throw a line to him. All that saved his life was his ability to swim like a sea lion and the skipper’s sagacity.

  The mate blamed the long ducking on the fish: “I was still so darned excited I forgot to hang on!”

  One year, an editor friend of mine who had read all my stories of deep-sea fishing came down to Miami and put me on the spot: “Take me out,” he said, “and prove it.”

  I took him out and, as so often happens, we trolled all morning without a strike. The day merely grew hotter. Toward noon, my friend told me that he was going below to change into a pair of shorts. I advised him to stick to his rod and get the mate to fetch his shorts. He looked at me sneeringly and said he thought there would
be plenty of time. There wasn’t, of course. Soon after he vanished, a white marlin showed behind his bait. I yelled at him. He didn’t hear. The marlin hit. I yelled louder.

  “What?” he faintly called.

  “Come and grab your rod, man! A white has just struck!”

  Belatedly, he made a rush up the ladder. But he had not had quite time enough to finish his shift. As he charged down the deck, his inadequately secured shorts dropped around his ankles and threw him on his face. Before he could regain his feet and get his breeches organized, the marlin had rejected his bait and swung over behind mine.

  There is an etiquette about these matters: whoever hooks the fish must catch him or the fish is not “fair caught.” I set my reel on free-spool and tried to hand my rod to my friend, but he was still pants-bound. So I struck and I took the marlin—a seventy-two-pounder, on nine-thread. I think I proved my point about excitement in the subsequent fight with the fish. But my editor friend has always felt somewhat gypped in the matter: it was his marlin until he decided to quit fishing and get those shorts.

  Another pal and I once used a white marlin to play a trick upon a mutual friend—a visiting fireman from Los Angeles. This gentleman, six feet three and about 220 pounds, an ex-football player, given to calling us “shrimps,” went fishing with us one day and hooked the white. We could see on the first leap that the fish ran in the fifty- to sixty-pound class. A little one. After about the tenth leap and the fifth run, we could also see that our 220-pound associate was getting bushed. So we began to tease him gently.

  The course of the contest, for some reason known only to the marlin, had meanwhile taken us inshore so that the boat now idled around over a sandy bottom some fifty or sixty feet below. And at that point the despairing marlin gave a last rush away and a frantic leap—in which he managed to throw a half hitch of leader wire around his tail. It pulled up tight, with the fish still slightly curved, so that the fish became a bow and the leader the bowstring. This not entirely rare event paralyzes the fish. He can no longer swim and immediately settles toward bottom, soon to be drowned by the pumping of the angler.