Denizens of the Deep

by Philip Wylie

  Experiences of this sort ultimately started a train of thought in my mind. They seem unusual and some are. For instance, I do not know anybody else who’s had a broken rod driven partway through his foot. But I saw my brother hurt himself badly (and lose a gigantic jewfish) when his rod broke and the force with which he’d been pulling drove the shattered butt against his forehead hard enough to cut it open. Had the break been an inch lower, he’d have lost an eye. But during the period when I was publicly belittling myself for losing a blue marlin owing to carelessness with a rod, Helen Lerner, one of the world’s best big-game fisherwomen, told me that the identical accident had befallen her and that she, too, had contributed an expensive rod and reel to the briny deep. Furthermore, her rod had been sighted—rusted beyond use—a year later, in the reefs off Bimini. The hooked marlin had evidently swum through that area and the trailing tackle had caught in the coral, after which the fish had been able to free itself by pulling out all the line and breaking it.

  In fact, whenever I told an angler of my misfortunes, I was told in turn of disasters similar, or greater, or funnier. There was, for example, a member of the above-mentioned club who, one day, went fly-fishing, in waders, on the “flats” of the Bay of Florida. He dragged in the water behind himself a gunny sack in which he put his fish, with a view to keeping them alive and thus fresh. The sack was tied around his waist so as to leave his hands free. In it, as he waded and cast his flies, he accumulated a nice mess of snappers, groupers, jack and so on.

  He was quite surprised when the sack of fish trailing behind him suddenly pulled so hard it sat him down—in about twenty inches of wet ocean. He stood up and was pulled down again. That time, however, he perceived it was neither a miracle nor the combined effort of his caught fish which explained his embarrassment. A very large shark—a shark so big its dorsal fin and back stood well out of water—had taken the fish-filled gunny sack in its mouth. Understandably, though perhaps unwarrantedly, my fellow club member feared his little fishes might be regarded as mere hors d’oeuvres and that he might become the shark’s main dish. He therefore untied the rope that attached the sack to his middle and abandoned his catch to the shark. During the time employed by the shark in ripping up the gunny sack, my friend made fast, splashy tracks for shore!

  People who go fishing for large tarpon seem to be especially beset by misfortune. Only a few days ago, I read an account of two anglers who were engaged in a serious tarpon duel. It was at first “serious” merely owing to the fact that it involved a large wager on the biggest fish taken. The two competitors angled indecisively for some days and then, minutes apart, each hooked a whopper. One man was fishing in a row-boat; the other fished hard by in the stern of a cruiser.

  The man in the small boat had battled his tarpon fairly close to defeat when the tarpon being fought by his colleague jumped aboard. In coming into the dinghy, the tarpon knocked down the embattled angler, damaged his rod and broke his line. Old angling hands would probably have called this “no contest” and continued the duel. But the two gentlemen in question took a different view. The man aboard the cruiser insisted that, even though his fish had jumped into the row-boat, it was “fair caught”—and he won the stakes. The man who was knocked down by it—though he’d lost his own hooked fish—insisted that, since the tarpon had pinwheeled aboard his craft, he had caught it! Newspaper accounts did not give the final decision on this subject—but it certainly constitutes hard luck of a most bizarre sort.

  Hard luck! It’s the litany of angling! One morning, off Miami, after many days of marlin trolling, a big “blue” rose behind my bait, followed it for a quarter of a mile, and then lunged, bill out, tail cutting the sea to foam. It was a sure strike, the start of a hard strike, a pretty fair bet that we’d hook him. And then, just as the marlin opened his mouth to gulp the bonefish, coming from nowhere a pelican dived with folded wings, beat the marlin by a foot, and flew off with the bait—until the line came tight and yanked it from the great bird’s bill. The marlin, apparently overwhelmed with chagrin at so ignominious an event, made no effort to take a second bonefish we were trolling on the other outrigger. It departed. We saw no more marlin on that expedition.

  Among tuna fishermen, a favorite tale of woe concerns the Cat Cay Tuna Tournament where, every year in the spring, some of the ablest and most obdurate deep-sea anglers in the world compete during the annual run of “horse mackerel.” The huge fish swim north along the Bahamas’ edge of the Gulf Stream in large schools, moving close to the surface. It is easy to sight them; it is often extremely difficult to present them with a bait which they will take. I have stood in the stern of a boat moving fast enough to keep just ahead of schools of four-and five-hundred-pounders, offering whole fish as bait and live fish, cut strips of fish, squid, feathers of various colors, and so on—and failed to get a single fish to turn from his group toward any lure.

  In so hotly fought a contest as the Cat Cay tourney, a single fish may mean victory. Hence the moment when a tuna is distracted from a school and decides to take a bait is highly important—and tensely dramatic. One year, a contestant who for days had not been able to induce a tuna to hit finally got a fish to swing away from its migrating brethren. A strike, at long last, was virtually assured. Unfortunately, at that crucial moment, the mate—an intent young man—bent a little too far forward in the effort to view the exciting, smashing hit. He fell overboard directly in front of the fish. Not being a man-eater, the tuna scrammed. And the luckless angler lost his opportunity.

  Long ago, as I’ve said, matters of this sort set me thinking. I had been made, by that time, a director of the corporation which manages the annual fishing tournament of the Miamis, Coral Gables, and surrounding suburbs and towns. This is said to be the biggest fishing derby in the world and, so far as I know, the claim has never been contested. After all, there are some six hundred species of fish in Florida waters, of which most are edible and many are game. These fish are, in general, abundant. And hundreds of thousands of people annually go in quest of them.

  The prizes for the varied game species are valuable and there are several for each sort of fish, as the fishing method and the tackle used determine the classifications of winners. Some anglers fly-cast, some bait-cast, some use spinning gear and some troll with light lines or the heaviest lines obtainable. As the years had passed I had observed that, for every catch which won a prize, there were uncountable tales of disaster, ignominy and rugged misfortune.

  So, a dozen years ago, I suggested to the tournament committee that these people, valiant even if unsuccessful, should also have a shot at a prize of some sort. There ought to be, I said, a consolation reward for the hapless man or woman or child who had, not the biggest fish, but, rather, the “toughest luck” of the whole tournament. The committeemen, being anglers, took a sympathetic view of the idea and, ever since, a silver cup has been awarded annually. It is called “the Philip Wylie Hard Luck Trophy” and I have never been certain that I liked the connection of my name with misfortune, though I will yield to few in the matter of bad breaks at fishing. This prize is, I believe, the only one of its kind in the world: not a “booby prize” but an award for grim effort in the face of hopeless predicament.

  People amongst Miami’s myriads of tournament entrants “compete” for the Hard Luck Trophy by the following method: if they believe their luck has been spectacularly bad, owing to circumstances surpassing the normal expectations of an informed piscatorial pessimist, they are invited to write out the details of their misfortune. At the end of the tournament, a board judges these accounts (which must be attested by others) and the cup is awarded. Needless to say, the trophy has elicited some somber tales.

  For it is tough to win the “tough luck trophy.” In fact, it is tough to try to decide, as a yearly judge, whose luck was foulest. For ordinary misfortune doesn’t even count in such a contest. Every season, for instance, dozens or scores or perhaps hundreds of people, unused to the routine difficulties of deep-sea an
gling, enter a “hard luck” story without realizing it is a “normal” trial, to the old hand.

  Thus, in 1941, the first year of the contest, the cup did not go to applicant R. A. Langley of Milton, Massachusetts. He hung what he at first assumed was the bottom of the sea. But it moved. In fact, it fought so tirelessly and so savagely that his companions in the cruiser began to ask for transportation else-where, before the unknown monster should be boated. The fish finally showed—a tiger shark, “estimated” at fifteen hundred pounds and “guaranteed” to go over a thousand. Mr. Langley didn’t catch the shark; it finally straightened out his heavy steel hook as if it had been a bent pin—and escaped. But straightened hooks are not regarded by old hands as particular misfortunes—any more than “frozen reels.”

  Many an angler—including your correspondent—has lost a fish that would have been a world record because, during the battle, the ceaseless in-and-out running of line under tension gradually spreads apart the flanges of a reel until they jam—or “freeze”—against the sides. There is no way, after that, to give or take in line—and the angler almost invariably loses a fish which then makes an easy lunge against a line that doesn’t give—breaking it.

  The final contest for the Hard Luck Trophy, that first year (if memory serves me correctly), was between Mr. Joe Nieser’s “hundred-dollar dinner” and Mr. Jim Scully’s “two-hour world record.”

  Mr. Nieser, while fishing from the Venetian Causeway (which connects Miami and Miami Beach) caught a six-pound pompano on very light tackle. An old fishing hand, well aware that the catch was excellent for the gear used, Mr. Nieser carefully weighed his prize on the scales in his tackle box. Then he hurried home. Three guests were due for dinner. In view of the fact that fresh pompano is among the greatest of delicacies, the fish was cut in fillets, served, and eaten. During the meal, Mr. Nieser choked. His pompano had not been weighed officially and according to the rules. He rushed to the phone. Sure enough, it would have been an all-time tournament record. But it was not even eligible—it was digesting. H. H. Hyman, chairman of the committee, calculated later, for the benefit of the anguished Mr. Nieser, that his prize would have been worth more than a hundred dollars, hence the meal had cost the angler twenty dollars a portion—as well as a tournament record. “Pompano,” Mr. Hyman said, “is, to be sure, an expensive delicacy—but twenty bucks a portion is on the high side.”

  Mr. Nieser applied for the Hard Luck Cup. So did a famed and skillful angler named Jim Scully, whom I happen to know. Jim longed above all things to have his name inscribed on the IGFA world-record rolls. And one afternoon while fishing over the reefs off Florida, he took a fifty-three-pound amberjack on “4-6” tackle—gear hardly heavier than that used by black-bass fishermen in fresh water. Jim kept the IGFA record charts in his tackle box. He scanned them. Sure enough, his catch qualified as a world record! He was being cheered and toasted by his companions on board the fishing cruiser when one of them, a Mr. Bert Harborn, also using “4-6” tackle, hooked another amberjack. It had taken Jim two hours to whip his fish on such light gear; Bert took about as long, only—and it was an important only—his fish weighed fifty-eight and a half pounds. So Jim’s name was not inscribed on the rolls of fame. The unprecedented thing had happened: a world record had fallen twice, on the same day, from the same boat. The tournament committee decided that Mr.Nieser had been a shade negligent in the matter of the pompano. But Jim had suffered a pure brand of that hard luck which dogs all fishermen.

  The next year, Sam Holden of Ottawa, Canada, was the chief contender. Mr. Holden hired a charterboat and fared forth innocently to fish. Somewhere off the alabaster skyline of Miami he hung, battled and boated a white marlin which he brought in with élan, weighed and hung on the fish rack for all to see. It weighed one hundred and thirty pounds. It was bigger than any tournament winner in the previous several years and looked to be a sure first. Word got around on the following morning, however, that Mr. Holden’s marlin was ineligible because it had been “mutilated by a shark.” Judges rushed to the scene and, sure enough, a pound or so of marlin had been devoured—by what proved to be a stray cat roaming the docks during the night! Mr. Holden’s relief was soon dashed. For he found he had caught the marlin on a charterboat that was not eligible to compete in the tournament. So his fish was ruled out. But it was eligible for a different, currently running competition, the George Ruppert Fishing Contest—with a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar first prize.

  This litany of disaster has continued down years crowded with unspeakable misfortune. For example:

  There is the case of Ernie Woolfe, a noted angler and a Miami Beach realtor. He took a ten-pound bonita on spinning gear, one day—weighed it and measured it and sent for judges to inspect it and denote it as what it was: a record. Before they arrived (and while Ernie was phoning proudly to his folks), a mate—new to the business—cut the prize up for strip baits! No record.

  A recent winner of my Hard Luck Trophy didn’t catch a fish at all. His name is Norman Theriot. During the 1950 tournament he had found and staked out a spot where some especially large barracuda and crevallé jack hung out. On the last day of the tournament, with very light tackle, Norman, in a skiff, went out to do what he was sure he could: break the records in a class or two. He made one cast, got one enormous strike—and then—because it was a windy morning—in the sea nearby a skiff overturned, and one of its three occupants was drowned immediately. Norman, by a Homeric feat of swimming, of wading in seas that surged over him, of running his own small skiff in surf, rescued the other two, resuscitated them, and finally got aid for them on the lonely beach where he’d brought them ashore. He didn’t get a record, he didn’t even get a chance to fish, but he did get the Hard Luck Cup—and the Carnegie Medal!

  There was a man who claimed the cup (but wasn’t awarded it) because, just as he was about to get a hit from “the biggest sailfish the captain had even seen” (this, by the way, is a classical description of lost fish), his wife’s hat blew off, hit the fish on the bill, was impaled, and frightened the fish away.

  Another worthy, fishing on a drawbridge, hung one of those “lost monsters” and fought it for half an hour. Then a bell rang and the drawbridge started up. The man jumped to terra firma and continued his struggle. However, owing to the position of the fish, the river and the canted bridge, his line now sawed back and forth across a lamp post. Finally it was frayed in two—and the fish escaped.

  In the record is another yet more somber tale. An angler caught a world-record tarpon while fly-fishing from the bank of some nameless Florida estuary. He slew the fish, weighed it on his own scales, noted it went several pounds over the current record, and set it in the shade while he continued his sport. When the sun sank, he went back to the spot to retrieve his prize—and found its tail vanishing between the jaws of a large alligator!

  Lines that lead from busy anglers to desperate fish and run out for three or four hundred yards are often cut by the prows of majestic freighters which plow south along the golden sands of Miami’s shore, just inside the north-racing Gulf Stream. But one of the saddest stories I ever heard concerned a nameless Keys gladiator who was casting in the old days from a trestle on the railroad line that once ran to Key West. Inadvertently, he let his back-cast dribble into the sea. It was thereupon seized by a big tarpon. He whirled about to give battle—and stepped back quickly. A Florida East Coast train was bearing down, whistling. The gentleman’s line was parted by its locomotive!

  Then I recall the case of the fellow who went fishing and was himself caught. There were three men in the skiff—plug casting. One of them, Tom Dupree, a Miami pioneer and realtor (real estate men seem to get mixed up often in these events), gave a mighty swing and planted all three of the triple-hook gangs on his plug in the scalp of a companion. The leader was cut. It was seen that a long trip back to the cruiser and a certain amount of minor surgery by another member of the party (who, luckily, was a doctor) would be required. But the thrice-hooked a
ngler insisted that the blow had deadened his nerves and that he felt no pain. So he went on fishing the rest of the afternoon—and won all the bets of that day. Mr. Dupree insists the man won all wagers, owing to the fact that the plug, dangling from his skull, “flashing like a Christmas Tree ball—and jingling with every cast,” unnerved everybody else and spoiled their skills. Possibly so. Anyhow, it didn’t hurt. I should know—I was the guy caught.

  Then, there’s the true story of the woman who was pulled overboard by a strike: tackle, harness, wicker chair and all; if she hadn’t been a good swimmer——

  But I forbear.

  Fishing, as I said at the start, is mostly hard luck. But it’s a wonderful sport—why dwell on its hazards? I’m going fishing, myself, in the Keys, this week. Maybe I’ll——

  What makes a great day’s fishing?

  The angler has one advantage over other sportsmen: he doesn’t mind growing old, nearly as much. The hunter, when his limbs tire with the years, has to narrow his range, to give up, perhaps, the hunt itself and, at long last, to shoot clay pigeons from a wheelchair. The fancy diver, the skier, the vigorous horseman are, as a rule, forced by age to lessen their activities; even tennis players must slow down; golfers play fewer holes—and those less strenuously. Age early retires most professional athletes. But the angler, whose principal act is patient sitting, can—if necessary—simply reduce the heft of his quarry and the size of his tackle so that, even as an old and feeble man, he can get from a bass or a ladyfish, with a trout or spinning rod, the same relative challenge, comparable thrills.

  The world is full of very old men—and women—who fish; it contains few who climb dangerous mountains. So when a certain magazine editor asked me to write of the highlights of my own fishing, it came with something of a shock that I had fished (already!) for forty years, and a bit more. I next remembered the essay F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote on becoming forty years old; he felt, at that age, the glamour and excitement of life had ended and everything ahead was dull stuff. I could not help wondering how he would have felt if he had been an angler—a real one. For then he would have had an area of interest where age was not a measure; he might easily have reasoned from that fact to a happier philosophy.