Not Just Fish Tales : With Billfish Charging Their Boats, These Anglers Recall Days When More Than a Catch Was on the Line

Fishermen’s sleepy heads bobbed as the boat plowed through an open and seemingly empty sea. Hours had passed and the steady drone of diesel engines served to tranquilize.

Suddenly, a fishing reel was singing the song of a strike as line spun from its spool. It was my turn in the rotation. Startled, I sprang to my feet, grabbed the rod from its holder, and reared back to set the hook at the moment the skipper opened the throttle.

In the distance, a blue marlin leaped and shook its slender body, trying to pop the lure from its bony jaw. It crashed back into the sea and leaped again, then took off on a series of long, drawn-out runs.

The mighty fish sounded, then the line went slack. I cranked as fast as I could, trying to gain line, but couldn’t. All eyes focused off the stern and suddenly the fish shot from the sea in a rage, charging at full speed and closing fast with successive leaps.

Jaws dropped. The skipper, who had stepped away from the wheel for a moment to watch, shrieked and scrambled back to the helm.

The marlin, it appeared, was intent on attacking he who held the rod--me! Its eyes were cold and black and it occurred to me that there existed a very real danger in this particular battle between man and fish.

The deckhand jumped to one side, the two other passengers dived for cover and I, holding the rod high, stepped back and to the middle of the deck--and froze.

As the fish left the water for what I believed would be the last time, the captain opened the throttle and spun the wheel, spilling everyone to one side of the boat.

The marlin, a good 10 feet long and probably 300 pounds, narrowly missed in what appeared a desperate attempt at vengeance.

The battle continued, though less eventfully, and several minutes afterward the fish was brought to the boat, no longer the valiant creature it had been at hookup but majestic nevertheless, charcoal-blue hues flowing the length of its body.

Its eyes were no longer black and angry, though, but hazy, fearful.

Out of respect, and with a good measure of sorrow, the fish was released. It wavered slowly for a few seconds, then swam back to its domain.

It is not uncommon for a hooked billfish to charge a boat when it discovers that it can’t shake the irritating hook. Usually, the boats are too fast and the skippers too alert to fall victim to a billfish’s counterattack.

But not always.

Ask Dennis Gagnon of Whittier, the owner of the San Diego-based Muy Pronto.

Gagnon will tell you about a friend who was fighting a sailfish in the small wooden boat when there occurred a dull thud. The sailfish eventually was brought in, minus its bill, and Gagnon quickly realized what the thud had been.

“If you were sitting in the head, (the bill) might have taken your kneecaps off,” he said. “It went right through the wooden hull and broke off thrashing around.”

Mark Wallace of Oxnard tells of a hooked marlin that skipped across an ocean crowded with boats, slamming into one a few dozen yards away. It shattered a side window, but the fishermen on board were too busy fighting a marlin of their own to notice what had happened.

Wallace, after releasing his dazed marlin, beat a hasty retreat to a less crowded area.

Said Luis Bulnes, owner of the Solmar Hotel at land’s end: “They do have a big bill, you know, and they can use it.”

Indeed they can.

Bulnes recalled the time a boat came sputtering into the Cabo San Lucas marina with a fish sticking out its side.

“It was a yacht that came in with half of the fish inside, and the other half outside,” Bulnes said. “It made a big hole in one of the sides of the boat. It was a 500-pound marlin.

“Most of the time the skippers can get out of the way in time. The fish will usually only hit if the motor quits. That’s why I don’t recommend you go fishing in a panga . You know, because it’s very dangerous. Those guys, they jump up over the boat from one side to the other.”

Patrick McDonnell, an editor for Western Outdoor News magazine, once wrote a column about a couple and their son fishing from a panga , off the East Cape Region near here. They hooked a marlin, which jumped into the boat and took the fight directly to the family and crew.

A few whacks to the bodies and faces later, the group realized that the best bet for survival was to abandon ship and let the marlin have it.

It ultimately became wedged between the seats and died.

And the family?

“They escaped serious injury, but were pretty badly bruised,” McDonnell said.

Then there’s Bill Harris of Newport Beach, whose fishing exploits in these parts are almost legendary.

Harris proudly recalls the year his 44-foot Cabo Fever was credited with the capture and release of more than 100 marlin.

But ask him which one stands out.

“That would be Nov. 6, 1982,” he says.

On that day, Harris and friends hooked into a blue marlin they estimated at 600-700 pounds. They fought the fish in calm seas for more than 3 1/2 hours.

“We got it up to gaff it and it just went crazy,” Harris said. “It went right through our transom with the spear. It flattened the back of the boat, put the spear through the door and then it just dropped back into the water. Then it went under the boat and slashed all of our hydraulics and left us.

“We were really lucky nobody got hurt because . . . you can imagine a 15-foot blue (marlin) coming into your boat.”

Harris never repaired the hole, instead marking it with a small plaque that tells the particulars of the run-in.

“It’s fun for us because people come out in their little pangas and look at the hole,” Harris says. “They want to see the boat with the hole in it.”

And there is the old story of former, and perhaps soon-to-be again, Los Angeles Ram Coach Chuck Knox, who in the late 1970s nearly came away from a fishing trip with a hole in his head.

Knox, who used to sponsor a charity fishing tournament each year out of Rancho Buenavista Hotel at the East Cape, was watching the deckhand tag and release one marlin when another jumped completely over the boat.

Chuck Walters, then owner of the hotel, said of the incident: “It only missed him by a foot.”

Finally, there is the person who insists that billfish can even get you when they’re dead.

Bill McElhaney, an editorial supervisor at The Times, was fishing with his father and grandfather, each of whom had caught his fish.

But young McElhaney, weary after hours of uneventful trolling during his turn, ventured into the cabin to sleep, stepping over the two dead marlin on the deck.

While he slept, another marlin hit one of the lures. McElhaney was called to do battle, but as he arose from his bunk, the skipper hit the throttle. McElhaney flew from the cabin and landed, posterior-first, on the sharp bill of the dead marlin.

“It went in about half and inch,” he said. “It stuck me good.”