Making things happen out on the open sea in the name of tuna
“If anything’s gonna happen,” declared Captain Ron, squinting through his one good, un-patched eye toward the open sea, “it’s gonna happen out there!” That’s a Kurt Russell tagline from the 1992 movie Captain Ron, and a phrase that became urgently relevant last week when we found ourselves “out there” with another Captain Ron at the helm and “anything” was about to happen ...
“Out there” is the mouth of the Ocean City Inlet and “anything” is a worrisome combination of cross currents, rolling seas, and rogue waves conspiring to bounce our boat around like an arcade pinball. At one point the 1999 vintage, 40foot Ocean Yacht burrows its bow deep into the brine, then bucks back to hurl a titanic swath of seawater over the bridge and cascading onto the deck below. “We’re turning back,” one mate declares as our wavedrenched captain vigilantly combats the controls.
It’s just 3:00 a.m., the dark of night, but the mate is mistaken. Captain Ron will not be deterred by the unwonted rough and tumble conditions our boat, Bill$ 4 Bills, encounters as we head out toward blue water. As in the immortal words of Seinfeld’s George Costanza, “The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.”
At the helm, Captain Ron struggles to keep us out of the soup, finally righting the ship as it churns through the mouth of the inlet and out into the open Atlantic. We’re not about to let a little thing like rockin’, rollin’ seas impede our quest for tuna, specifically that one coveted fish that could top the leaderboard of the 31st Annual Ocean City Maryland Tuna Tournament and snag a hefty share of the $857,000 in prize money at stake.
Once we emerge from the inlet, it’s a long, slow, body-slamming slog to the Washington Canyon, some 70 statute miles offshore. By all accounts that’s where the yellowfin are hanging out. That’s where yesterday’s charter collected a hefty stringer full of 50-pounders. A repeat performance would be fine with us.
But today is Friday the 13th, an inauspicious date for members of the notoriously superstitious angling fraternity (none of whom permit bananas aboard their boats). On the other hand, our boat is number seven out of 104 participating vessels. Perhaps that traditionally lucky number could offset any residual triskaidekaphobia our fishermen might be feeling.
We endure a bumpy, stomach-churning three hour jaunt where the name Nauseous Yet? might serve as a more apropos moniker for our craft. It’s 6:45 when we finally reach the fishing grounds with tournament lines permitted in the water at 7:00. As Captain Ron slows the throttle to trolling speed, mates Jake Shaffer and Brian Spangenberger get to work preparing eight lines baited with ballyhoo and spreader rigs. Shaffer, 24, and Spangenberger, 39, have served as mates on the Ocean City waterfront for six years, primarily with Captain Ron, and the two work well together. Each brandishes heavy ink on his respective calf, nautical tattoos that proclaim their dedication to the seafaring life and angling adventure.
On the bridge, Captain Ron meticulously counts down to the seven o’clock starting gun. Ron is Ron Callis, a USCG licensed captain and IGFA certified observer who also serves on the Board of Directors of the Ocean City Marlin Club, the second oldest such organization in the country. Callis, age 65, has been piloting charters out of the Ocean City Fishing Center for 30 years and, like so many captains and mates here, is fully immersed in the town’s ubiquitous fishing culture. Locally he’s recognized as a dapper bon vivant, raconteur, a man about town who’s well respected for his tilefishing expertise. For a number of years he held the world record for golden tilefish, a 59.2-pounder caught in the Poor Man’s Canyon in May of 2007, a record that’s since been broken.
At the stroke of seven Callis signals the mates who immediately begin feeding out the baits. It’s a finely choreographed ballet as the two coordinate their efforts to get the eight lines in the water as quickly and efficiently as possible with the captain supervising from above. Now all we have to do is await the first strike.
Our tourney team includes me, my brother Dan from Brookhaven, West Chester’s Pete Werner and his son Bryan, and Chadds Ford’s Mike Maxwell and his son Mike. We’ve elected to let the young guns, Mike, 29, and Bryan, 31, lead off the fishing rotation. After that it will come down to every man for himself to establish the rest of the pecking order.
We don’t have long to wait. With sun soaked skies above and steep four to eight foot ocean swells beneath, the tuna bite turns on in earnest. Less than a minute after the baits hit the water, three rods bend and hooked fish strip line from the corresponding reels. Young Mike and Bryan man the first two rods. Dan grabs the third, and now, as the three anglers battle their respective fish, Spangernberger and Shaffer frantically reel in the other lines and clear the deck.
Bryan cranks up an albacore, but Dan’s fish has some meat on it. Once it’s at the boat, Shaffer grabs the leader and flips a modest yellowfin over the rail. The fish is no trophy but exceeds the 27-inch legal limit, so into the box it goes. Shaffer hauls in young Mike’s yellowfin a few minutes later, but, a bit shy of the minimum, it’s immediately unhooked and released.
I’m up next and by 7:15 my own modest yellowfin comes over the rail. It’s smallish but big enough, and joins Dan’s fish in the box. Barely two minutes pass before another bait gets hit and big Mike cranks in his first legal yellowfin of the morning. More action soon follows as the Werner father and son team simultaneously lug two more keeper yellowfins into the boat. It’s a frantic, frenetic scene as the mates scramble to land fish, reel in and reset lines, and replace hooks and baits. “Organized chaos,” observes the elder Werner.
The action slows for a while as the ocean comes alive with pilot whales, flying fish, and tuna jumping far behind the boat. On the next hit Dan pulls in a little skipjack but minutes later the elder Maxwell muscles in our best tuna so far, a yellowfin that will tip the scales at 23 pounds. I’m up again and pull in the prettiest fish of the day, a respectable mahi-mahi.
By 10 o’clock everyone has caught tuna, but the bite drops off dramatically. The next fish hits at 10:20 but is lost within seconds. “Don’t know what happened,” puzzles Shaffer. “Pulled the hook. Too bad, felt like a pretty good fish.” A classic case of the big one getting away? We’d never know. And now the bite comes to a screeching halt. Four more bouncy, action-free hours drift by. With just a few ticks left before the 3:00 p.m. deadline, Captain Callis calls for lines out. But before the last bait leaves the water a rod curves and monofilament strips out. Incredibly, with just five seconds left to go we’re hooked up.
It’s one final adrenaline rush but a short-lived one. Inexplicably, the line goes slack and the fish is gone, a disappointing finale to an otherwise excellent outing. We won’t make the leaderboard today, but we report to the docks with six tuna and a dolphin in the box, a tally that places us among the highest hooks of all the fleet that sailed that morning.
And tomorrow we get to do it all over again.