Tuna Fish

He said that we weren't going to chase any tuna, but if we caught some along the way, that was OK, too. What with recent waterfront adventures, a week or so absence seemed expedient, and the prospect of some open ocean fishing beckoned.

Since the boat was empty of fuel, it was riding high in the water so we motored over to the fuel dock and got 1,200 gallons of diesel. Also, this fishing boat didn't have a refrigerator, therefor we loaded three tons of ice into the hold, which added ballast to help the boat ride better in the waves. At the ice house, the Cap'n went in and bought the ice, then the big ice blocks were rolled along a conveyor to a grinder and blasted through a big hose into the hold. The Cap'n was down in the hold blasting the ice up one side and down the other; when he came up out of the hold, I laughed at the sight of him with frozen hair and eyebrows and blue skin, but he didn't crack a smile, either not seeing the humor in the situation, or being too frozen to react.

We'd run into another fishing boat headed up the coast and thought to partner-up to keep an eye on each other just in case. But a couple of things happened on the way out of the Bay which changed our plans a bit. The other boat was leading the way toward the Golden Gate Bridge when they radioed that they'd lost steering, and while we were
deciding whether the repair things there or tow them back in, they spotted a body floating. It had apparently been in the water a few days as it was bloated. So, they decided to call the Coast Guard to report the body and get towed in.

Just past the bridge, the sea gets wavy, and if the tide is surging in, one can be pulled toward the Potato Patch, a bunch of rocks on the north side. I've sailed through there with the motors going full and the boat going kind of sideways, which is called "crabbing," but this time the tide was running and getting out into the ocean was easy.

We ran up the coast and the Cap'n said that we might as well put the lines out because the tuna were swarming about twenty miles up. There were two long wooden poles either side of the cabin with three lines apiece, and we tied four more lines off the stern. We were trolling rubber squid with two hooks, no barbs; when the tuna hit, the trolling speed keeps them on the hook 'til they're pulled in. On the way to the feeding frenzy, we caught two tuna; one about 100lbs. and one about 80lbs.. When the tuna hit, we pull them in by hand until they're at the back of the boat, then we gaff them and yank them on board. The hook looks like a medium-sized baseball bat with a curved steel spike, we whack them in the back of the head, pull them up, and put a finger into their gills to pull their arteries and let them bleed-out. The tuna vibrate for about thirty seconds, then expire. The normal color of these tuna is blue/black on top and silver/white on their bellies. At the moment the tuna expire, they "shoot the rainbows," and the silver/white part twinkles with iridescent colors for maybe ten or twenty seconds. There is probably a chemical explanation for this, but I see it as the life-force visibly leaving the fish. We put the fish in a big wooden box covered with burlap and hose it down with sea water.

We chugged up the coast about twenty miles from the Golden Gate and were still within sight of land when we spotted many fishing boats sailing in circles while guys on the decks were busily pulling in tuna. The water is shallow there and the tuna run in to feed making it easy for the fishermen. Tuna also run down the 52� F thermal edge in the ocean current, and the boat has a thermometer on the hull to follow the edge to be in closer proximity to the tuna. Also, there's a "fishfinder," a kind of sonar that can locate schools of fish, but our trolling method requires that the tuna be surfaced and feeding. There were so many boats trolling so close to each other that there seemed a real possibility that collisions would occur, so we elected to run on up the coast and away from the traffic jam.

We caught a couple of more strays, and the sea was getting a bit choppy, so we put out the flopper-stoppers. There were chains that hang from the long wooden side poles, and the chains have what look like small delta-wing jet planes with a two-foot wing span and made of aluminum; these planes "fly" under the water with very little drag and prevent the boat from rolling side-to-side. We were getting pretty far out to sea by this time, still headed north but well away from the coastal traffic. We passed two 350 ton Russian "factory boats" headed south; they stay out fishing and canning 'til they're full then head back to port. The Russians have some kind of treaty that they can fish within the 200 mile limit, but not 10 mile limit; I think that's it.

It got dark, and the Cap'n decided to go on four hour watches while we were running north. The boat was on auto, but I sat in the chair to watch stuff while the Cap'n was sleeping. The ocean was nice; no chop and long swells. I flipped the side spotlights on and soon there were porpoises running alongside feeding on the little fish they could find under the lights. The porpoises would run up the back of a wave feeding, then corkscrew out of the water spinning back into the center of a trough to run up the next wave, kind of playing and eating at the same time. It was fun to watch them. I drank a glass of dago red wine and put the tea kettle on for coffee later. I was sitting in the chair half hypnotized by the motion of the ocean when the boat started to make a left turn, not as if we'd struck something but sudden enough to give me a start. I looked out the right side of the boat, and a big damned shark had bit one of the flopper-stoppers and was trying to run with it! The flopper-stopper was about two feet wide, so the shark's head was better than three feet wide, and I'm guessing that it was at least 50 feet long. That it could pull our 72' boat which had two 6-cylinder diesel engines gave me pause. We had a 20 gauge shotgun with slugs, so I thought to shoot it and try to get a chain around its tail to tow it in, but I also thought that if I shot it, it might get pissed and ram the boat. After the shark figured out that it couldn't eat the flopper-stopper, it swam off; I was very impressed to have seen such a large shark, but very glad that it had decided to find a midnight snack somewhere else.

All the next day, the sea became more agitated, we were a couple of hundred miles out with a storm on the way and figured to keep heading north rather than making a run to port. That day, the waves were 15-20 feet and I was down in the cutty cabin in the bow reading, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," by Hunter Thompson, a pretty funny book
about his reporting on the SuperBowl from a hotel room. When the boat was going up a wave, I weighed 50% more, and when the boat went down a wave, I weighed 50% less, sometimes even floating up off the bunk. By dark that day, I'd gotten some sleep and the waves had gotten to 30-35 feet and the wind was blowing.

The game plan for riding-out the storm was to keep the boat generally headed into the running sea so that waves would not hit the boat broadside and capsize us. The Cap'n went to sleep and left me sitting in the chair at the wheel which didn't require much attention as the boat was doing OK maintaining an into-the-waves direction. I don't get sea sick, but food preparation was out of the question, so I was sipping red wine and hot chocolate. The boat would take 7-10 seconds to ride up a wave and the same down the other side. In the trough of a wave, all that could be seen was the next one. I'd seen "rogue waves" before, errant giant waves that don't fit the normal sets, but I wasn't thinking encountering one as the sea seemed violent enough without conjuring more mayhem. But like many things that come when unexpected or at a seemingly inopportune time, as the boat crested a 30' wave, there before me was a solid wall of water that all but obscured the sky. There was no changing course, the boat ran down the wave and squarely into the giant rogue, but instead of riding up the surface, we went under it! All of a sudden, it was very quiet and the boat ceased it gyrations, all was calm and peaceful, save for the fact of being under tons of water. The side lights were still on, but all that I could see out of the windows was green water and bubbles. I fully expected the glass to shatter and tons of water to pour in on the Cap'n and me. The Cap'n was still asleep, oblivious to our peril, and I thought to wake him so that we might put on out thermal flotation survival suits, but there wasn't time for that. I looked at the door, and only a little water was trickling in. Just then, like a cork, we popped out the other side of the mountain of water and resumed the roller coaster ride. The next morning, I told the Cap'n that we'd been completely under water for a while during the night, but he seemed indifferent to the passed peril, it was water over the bridge, as it were.

The sea calm and the sky clear and sunny, the Cap'n got some more bunk time and I went up on the bridge to enjoy some fresh air. There was a chair and a hydraulic remote tiller up on the bridge so that I could steer the boat from there if needed. I spotted two whales and followed them for about twenty miles. They were running on the surface, and I could see them blowing air and their fluked tails. I was close enough that I could see the barnacles on them. Then in the distance about two points off the port bow, I saw many tuna jumping, running more or less toward the boat. I swung the rudder toward the school of jumpers inadvertently rolling the Cap'n out of his bunk, and he came up to the bridge pissed-off. I'm waving and pointing and yelling, "Jumpers! Jumpers!" So, the Cap'n simmers-down and says, well, ok, and puts the lines out. Then he gets a look at the size of the school of tuna and grins. We hit the school of tuna and locked the wheel over circling through and catching tons of tuna. We made port at Gold Beach, Oregon in the middle of the night with a hold full of fresh-caught tuna. The lights of the harbor and the town twinkled and I finished the last of the dago red wine, happy to be on some flat water for a change.