Seaworthy (15 page)

It was disconcerting to register so little on my swordfish fact sheet after nearly twenty years of intense study. I thought I knew my adversary. Perhaps some of my past success stemmed from my solid trust in the fact that I don't
really
know anything about catching fish. At least not compared with men who fish on species that are a more cooperative study subject. Some types of fish just lend themselves better to the microscope than swordfish do. The realization that I know so little has fed my desire to work harder to compensate for my lack of knowledge. Covering all the bases every night and avoiding putting all eggs in a single basket were hard-learned lessons. Every time I believed I had swordfish figured out, they threw me a curve. They're clever, and elusive, and mysterious. Swordfish and I first engaged in this game of hide-and-seek in 1979. And thirty years later we're both still in the game. These realizations led me to a grudging respect for swordfish. I do admire their tenacity. This game is a dance of sorts, or a collaboration. We, the fish and I, both have our jobs to do. Any given day it's a toss-up which of us is doing our job better. Sometimes I feel like a gallant saltwater cowboy busting broncos. Other times I just wait for my horse to be shot out from under me. Damn fish. I laughed to myself. Our relationship is weirder than any I'd had with humans of the opposite sex. And I'd had some weird ones.

 

As we plodded our way merrily to the east, I had nearly resigned myself to the fact that Scotty would reach the fishing grounds far enough in advance of us that he'd get in a night, or possibly two, before we set a hook. Chompers on the
Bigeye
might be leaving Newfoundland soon, and there were a handful of other boats stretching out gear where I would like to be, including a couple of big producers from Nova Scotia. That was just the way it was. And there wasn't a thing I could do to change it. I did hold on to the hope that Mother Nature would do me a favor (not that one was owed) by kicking up a major disturbance that would keep the others from fishing but not slow
our
progress toward the grounds. All I asked was a small, intense, localized gale directly on top of the
Eagle Eye II.
Nothing dangerous, but bad enough to cause Scotty to sit and wait while I caught up would be optimum. Even a little gale-force wind could stir the sea to a state that could prohibit the transfer of Scotty's crew from boat to boat. And no crew would mean no fishing, I thought gleefully. Perhaps Chompers would run into complications ashore that would delay his departure. As the next forty-eight hours passed, it became clear that weather would not be a factor east of the Grand Banks, where the boats were enjoying decent fishing and beautiful conditions.

As the buzz on the radio indicated Scotty's nearness to his first set, we approached the west side of the Grand Banks. It was about noon when I realized that we had a shot at setting gear that night. It was not uncommon to find a puddle of warm water pushed up onto the west side of the bank, where the depth of water shoaled abruptly. And the right temperature water “on soundings” could produce some very healthy swordfish, I knew. I inspected the chart and chose a waypoint to steam to. Jukes Canyon was a place that I remembered from the past as a possibility. Although I'd never had great success on the west side, others had. There was always plenty of motivation and rationale to fish the west side, rather than steaming the extra distance across the bank and way off to the east. Time and fuel were both burning incentives, not to mention my competitive nature, which fanned the flames. I kept fingers crossed as we closed the gap between “not tonight” and “maybe.”

The guys assured me that we were in great shape with regard to gear. They had accomplished the building of twelve hundred leaders in their spare minutes between emergency repairs and were as excited as I was at the possibility of getting the real show started. As with any job, most of the work is in the preparation. Like house-painters dipping the brush into a freshly opened can of paint after days of scraping, sanding, and taping, we were closing in on the part that made the difference. When we had reached the thousand-fathom curve, I had convinced myself that we would set gear tonight unless the water temperature was ridiculously sharky.

Cold water could really produce sharks. But it is also where the slammer swords lurk. A few blue sharks didn't scare me, so long as the odd swordfish came along with them. Blue sharks were a nuisance that needed to be handled in some number when you were fishing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland regardless of water temperature. But it always seemed that the greatest sharking-ups were a result of the cold side of the temperature gradients we traditionally fished. And the danger in sharks went beyond their fearsome teeth. Sharks chew up expensive gear and valuable, limited time. Twelve hundred brand-new leaders . . . Still fresh in my mind was advice from shoreside captains about fishing colder than I had in the past. Everyone had shifted to the cool side, they said, as it was where the fatter, healthier fish were coming from. I recalled hearing that John Caldwell, the captain of the
Eagle Eye II
before Scotty, had fished water as cold as fifty-six degrees his last trip. I never used to fish water that cool. But in the ten years that I was off the water, the use of circle hooks had been mandated by law, and mackerel was the bait of choice. That combination apparently worked well in the cold water.

When I found sixty-two-degree water inside five hundred fathoms, my pulse quickened in anticipation of what I knew was a very good sign. Bait fish often linger around depth changes—or bottom contour, as seen on a navigational chart. And when water the right temperature pushes over relatively shallow depths, it can mean big fishing.

I jogged the
Seahawk
to a position at the head of Jukes Canyon and very close to Canada's two-hundred-mile limit. When setting gear this close to the boundary line, it is imperative to ensure that your gear will drift away from the line, farther out to sea and therefore deeper into the international zone fished by every country with a fleet. Unless you're a Canadian citizen, you are not welcome to fish north of the boundary line that encompasses the water out to two hundred miles from the shores of Newfoundland. Canada patrols the line vigilantly with boats and airplanes, protecting her water from poachers.

I knocked the engine out of gear in order to perform a “drift test.” I had always done drift tests in the past, regardless of my proximity to any boundaries, to check the speed and direction of the current in which I was preparing to set gear. I usually had the best luck fishing the faster-moving water on the edge of the Gulf Stream. As a general rule, the areas that Grand Bankers like most are where the stream meets the slower-moving, colder Labrador Current. Places where these two bodies of water collide most dramatically produce sharp temperature breaks, or gradients, that are relatively easy to follow. The most common practice when fishing a break is to weave the forty-mile line back and forth across the different temperatures that signify a current change. Current changes, or tide breaks or rips, naturally collect critters low in the food chain, which is why they are so productive. As Ringo would say, “Where there's prey, there's a predator.”

The wind was light and variable, so it had little or no effect on our drift. I pushed a button on the plotter, leaving an event mark on the screen to represent our present position, and went below to check the deck and take a “down temp” reading. The gauge in the wheelhouse used to find and follow breaks measures the temperature close to the surface, as its transducer is in a through-hull fitting. The sending unit is no deeper than wherever it is fixed through the hull, in this case probably eight feet. And our gear was rigged to fish at a depth of about ten fathoms. So if there was ice water at ten fathoms, or sixty feet, below a warmer surface, I would be stupid to fish here. I had a need to know the temperature at sixty feet.

Some boats have towable temperature sensors, or “down temps,” fixed to a fin that swims at a depth the captain specifies. These are towed almost constantly and really make a difference, in that the captain knows the water temperature at the depth he is fishing, in addition to what's going on at the surface. If the hooks are dangling at a depth of ten fathoms below the surface, it's helpful to know the temperature there. But the
Seahawk
was not so equipped. Instead we had a jury-rigged sensor, duct-taped to a lead window-sash weight, attached to an electrical extension cord that was wired into a digital readout mounted inside a small Plexiglas window that could only be seen from where I would stand to haul the gear back. Our rig could not be towed. So lying to with the boat out of gear while conducting a drift test was a good opportunity to take a down temp. Because ours could not be towed while steaming, spot checks were the only option. “This is better than nothing,” I said as Arch assisted me in untangling loops of electrical cord that had been stored in a plastic milk crate.

“Not really,” Arch replied when he peeked at the gauge after paying overboard ten fathoms of cord. “Unless the water temperature is seventy-seven degrees down there, I'd say this thing is junk.”

I squeezed myself into a spot where I could also see the readout. The red digital numbers jumped up and down in thirty-degree skips. “That isn't very helpful,” I said with a slight chuckle. “The temperature is somewhere between fifty and seventy. I knew that without the gauge.”

“I guess I'm not surprised that it doesn't work. I'll see if I can fix it,” Arch said. “What does the gauge in the wheelhouse say?”

“I bumped her out of gear in sixty-five. The color of the water is good,” I said as I leaned over the rail and stared into the blue abyss. There is a certain color and clarity, almost like a visual texture, to water that produces the most fish and the fewest sharks. I tried to bring those qualities to the surface from the depth of ten years. “I think this looks fine.”

“We gonna try it?”

“As long as the current isn't doing anything funky, we'll start setting at four-thirty,” I said as I headed back to the bridge. When I entered the wheelhouse I was happy to see that the surface temperature had risen slightly: up to 66.1 from 65.2, where I had begun the drift test. I looked at the plotter and could see that we had drifted a short distance to the southeast from the event mark. Perfect, I thought. The GPS indicated that we were moving at 1.4 knots and 147 degrees. This was ideal. If I set the gear around the head of Jukes Canyon and it drifted in a southerly direction, the string of gear would pull down and through the canyon and fish a variety of depths through the night. Sharp depth changes, like tide breaks, are places where feed is abundant. And Jukes Canyon had fairly steep walls on either side. With the current at this pace and direction, if I made a good set, one-third of the gear would drift from shallow to deep, another third would drift from deep to shallow, and the middle third would move through the center of the canyon. Birds worked the surface of the water as far as I could see. I couldn't have ordered a better situation. I yelled below for the guys to get bait out of the freezer for eight hundred hooks.

Happy . . . perfect . . . ideal . . . I hoped I wasn't kidding myself. I knew better than to get overzealous. But I couldn't help it. This is what we had come for. This is what I do. And, to my mind, things looked good.

I
was feeling extremely anxious to get the gear set out, but I knew well the hazards of putting the gear into the water too early. If the gear moves through the fish before “the bite,” or feeding time, you stand a good chance of missing them altogether. The peak of the moon, or when it reaches its highest and brightest point in each twenty-four-hour cycle, is an hour later every night. Bait fish come to the surface in the light of the moon. Thus swordfish feed relatively close to the surface at night while chasing bait fish, and so the peak of the swordfish bite is an hour later each night, beginning at the first trace of a moon. This far after the full moon, it would be wise to be patient and set a bit later than when the moon was at its first-quarter phase, so that the hooks didn't drift out of where they were set before the bite. Until very recent years, most of us believed that swordfish were nocturnal feeders, eating exclusively at night. But savvy sports fishermen off the coast of Florida had proved otherwise. If you can get a hook to bottom in water deeper than a mile, you can catch fish during the day. That is pretty tricky but doable with a couple of hooks and an electric reel. Not an option here and now, though. We were Grand Banks commercial long-liners. Patience not being a personal virtue, I found it hard to wait.

Of course I was aware that it was possible to set too late. Again, the string of gear needs to be in the water during the bite. And the longer the gear is in the water, the more distance it covers by drifting. Distance covered with movement in the current is advantageous when you're fishing just a temperature break. But it's not so good when fishing a depth change, as the gear will be out of the catching zone as soon as it moves away from soundings. The sun was still directly overhead, and there was not yet any sign of a moon. I forced myself to wait.