21 1/2 Is Enough : Aames Spends Almost a Day Bringing In His Marlin

Limbs cramped, hands blistered, soaked in saltwater and his own urine after hours under a relentless sun, Willie Aames had to ask himself if he was really having fun.

“We needed a good fish to be in the money,” Aames said later. “The moral there is, be careful what you pray for.”

In television land, Aames, 30, is the eternal teen-ager: Buddy Lembeck from “Charles in Charge” or Tommy Bradford from “Eight Is Enough.” But around Cabo San Lucas, he’ll answer to el pescador-- the fisherman.

If he had to make a choice . . . well, acting is his occupation. Fishing is his passion. If he could combine the two, he would have been Spencer Tracy fighting the fish of his life. He wanted to star in “The Young Man and the Sea.” For a day and a night last month, that fantasy came true.

Aames was at Cabo for the 10th annual Bisbee’s Black and Blue Marlin Jackpot tournament, billed as the richest marlin tournament in the world.

Aside from the money--$70,000 for first place, $134,784 for the jackpot--Aames would rather win the tournament than an Emmy.

“I’ve fished all over the world for marlin and billfish--Palau, New Zealand, Australia, Guam, Hawaii, Florida, Mexico--looking for a marlin for the past 15 years,” he said. “Never got one.”

Aames lives in Costa Mesa, a fifth-generation Californian. His great-grandfather was a charter member of the legendary Avalon Tuna Club on Catalina Island. Big-game fishing was in his genes. As a youngster, Aames sold live bait at the end of the Huntington Beach Pier. He rolled gunny sacks at Art’s Landing for free trips and later became a deckhand. He worked on commercial dive boats.

He told the tournament sponsors: “I will either win this tournament or I’ll sing ‘My Way’ dressed in full street drag at the awards banquet.”

So there he was, on the last day of the tournament, out on the Leigh Ann with Capt. Tony Nungaray and crewmen Juan Garcia Passett and Eben Adams Brown, waiting for a hit.

“I just knew,” he said. “At about 10:15 (a.m.) I looked up--and this is going to sound really weird--and said, ‘Lord, I need a fish.’ Fifteen minutes later-- wham!”

Aames yelled “neutral” to Nungaray on the bridge and made sure the reel was in free spool, allowing the fish time to swallow the bait. Then Aames told Nungaray to “hit it,” waited for the line to go taut and slammed the reel into gear to set the hook.

“I knew it was a big fish from the way it was smoking line off the reel,” Aames said. “As soon as I slammed it into gear, the rod went right to the rail.”

Aames had a black marlin on the line. For the next 21 1/2 hours, he would devote his life to landing that fish--and remembering, he asked for it.

MIDAFTERNOON

Aames is not a big guy: 5 feet 6 and 148 pounds. Rules prohibit anyone else from handling the rod. The strain is starting to tell. The crew pours water on him to keep him cool. Calls of nature must be answered where he sits.

They know the black is big, but how big they can’t tell. It never jumps. Later, they will learn that the line is wrapped twice around in front of the pectoral fins and behind the dorsal. In effect, the fish isn’t hooked but harnessed and therefore much more difficult to control. All Aames can do is hang on.

“It was like walking a dog--except this was like walking a freight train,” Aames would say later. “That fish was feeding all night. I could feel him sit for a minute, then zip off in one direction and pull off about a hundred yards of line, and I’d feel him suck up.”

Nungaray keeps backing the boat down on the fish, backing down. But every time he gets close enough to give Aames some leverage on the fish and start short-pumping him a little, the line goes straight down against the swim step and he has to throw the boat into gear and pull forward. The fish hears the boat shift into gear and runs the other way. The fight continues that way until sunset.

Hurricanes Trudy and Vance are lurking over the horizon. It is hoped they keep their distance.

DUSK

Nungaray leans over the side of the bridge, catches a glimpse of the fish and whistles.

“That’s a big fish,” he says.

Big enough to drag the Leigh Ann all over the ocean. The boat is out of water, out of food, critically low on fuel, has no deck lights, and the radio is going out. Nungaray calls Capt. Joe Mike Lopez on the Top Hat for assistance.

The Top Hat hands over water, candy bars and sandwiches and offers to stay all night, illuminating the scene with its lights. Lopez and his crew become a rooting section: “Don’t give up! Don’t give up! That fish is yours. Fifty more pumps and he’s yours.”

Later, Aames would say, “That kept me going.”

ABOUT 9-10 P.M.

Aames’ arms, hands and legs are cramping. Eating aspirin seems to help ease the pain and keep him awake.

Passett and Brown, the deckhands, shine flashlights on the line. Nungaray constantly maneuvers the boat to prevent the fish from taking too much. Fifteen times Aames reels it into the double line near the leader, but each time they must back off when the fish threatens to snap off the line at the swim step.

Back at Cabo, the awards banquet is postponed because the potential winner is still playing his fish--or vice versa. People are starting “hookup parties,” sitting around radios, or walking along the streets asking, ‘What’s going on with the fish?’ Even in Southern California, 40 or 50 of Aames’ fishing friends stay up all night, getting progress reports by phone.

Aames knows that “the odds of landing a fish after eight hours are nil, and after 16 hours it’s double nil.”

PRE-DAWN

Nungaray is getting nervous. If Aames doesn’t land the fish soon, he may lose it.

The drag on the reel gave out sometime in the middle of the night. High gear is broken. Each time the fish runs, Aames must try to stop the spool with his hands, and his fingers are sucked into the sprocket.

“My hands are turning into meat,” he says.

The Leigh Ann is above some deep canyons, and Nungaray fears the fish is going down deep to die. If that happens, there will be no choice but to cut the line.

Aames, reaching deep into his last reservoir of energy, puts the brakes on as best he can.

Nungaray tells him: “Come on, Willie, this fish isn’t going to come up by itself. You’ve got to crank. You’ve got to stop the fish.”

For an hour and 15 minutes, Aames alternately grabs the spool, raises the rod as high as he can and cranks it down ever so little--maybe seven or eight inches of line at a time. Once at the double line, he can exert more pressure on the rod without fear of it snapping off. He pumps harder until, finally, the line is at the leader, and the crew can use the gaffs.

It takes three gaffs to get the fish onto the swim step. Aames collapses in the chair. A few minutes later, when he tries to get up to lean over the transom and look at the fish, his legs buckle.

GRAND ENTRANCE

As they enter the harbor, boat horns are blowing. More than 1,000 people line the shore. Others cheer from the balconies of the Hotel Plaza Las Glorias, above the marina. Aames has all but forgotten about the 333-pound black marlin the Leigh Ann landed on the first day. Usually, only one black is landed in the tournament. No boat had ever caught two.

“We began to realize we may have won,” Aames said. “And, more than winning, we realized what we did was so unusual that is something you only read about. It’s something I fantasized about my entire life. At that point I was everything I ever wanted to be in life.”

Nungaray estimated that the fish dragged the boat 23 miles. It weighed in at 457 pounds.

“It wasn’t the world’s biggest fish, but the fish’s personality was bigger than the entire tournament,” Aames said.

The biggest fish weighed 463 pounds--but the angler hadn’t paid the extra $3,000 to enter the jackpot, above the $2,000 tournament entry fee. So Aames won both and divided the money with Nungaray and the crew.

“No one person caught this fish,” Aames said. “There were three other guys on that boat working every bit as hard as I was.

“There were people that claimed it was a publicity stunt. I can think of a lot better ways to get publicity in my business than to sit there for 21 hours and hamburger my hands.

“Everybody dreams of getting that one big fish--the Hemingway fish. To be able to say I’ve done that, after 15 years of not getting a billfish, I guess patience paid off.”