EDITOR’S LETTER
One of the great benefits of a life on the water is the ability to see incredible displays of nature. Our editor reflects on some memorable ones.
The fish flew completely out of the water, flipped upside down and landed, leaving a truck-size hole in the ocean behind the boat.
Amoment can make a lasting impression. I’vespentagood amount of my teenage and adult years offshore, and I have had the chance to see nature on full display countless times. It’s always an incredible experience. ¶ A few years ago, while 100 miles from nowhere in the North Atlantic, I watched a school of giant rays take flight out of a slick-calm sea. From my view, they appeared to be doing backflips. It was a mesmerizing performance that illustrated their strength and grace. ¶ On another trip, my eyes were tuned in on a pod of pilot whales when the sea erupted around us with 200-pound-class bigeye tuna leaping about the whales, giving the ray show a run for its money. ¶ Once, while our crew was slowing down to manage a white marlin we’d hooked up, we all watched in awe as a large wahoo that had its eye on one of our other lines missed its timing run. It flew out of the water and over the boat’s starboard after corner. The whole incident seemed to go down in slow motion as the fish soared over our heads and landed back into the sea with Olympic-diver precision. ¶ But one of the most amazing shows to date happened just two months ago. I was on my buddy’s Viking at the White Marlin Open in Ocean City, Maryland. We’d made a 90-mile run in less-than-ideal conditions. The wind was steady, and the seas were confused from an earlier front, but the forecast would get better as the day went on, so we toughed it out. Seas were a lumpy 5 to 6 feet for most of the morning. That said, the boat is solid in a seaway, and we just trolled along doing our thing. ¶ Following a hit and miss with a blue marlin, we made our way in to about 200 fathoms. I was sitting on the mezzanine with our mate Roddy watching the spread when it happened: A massive cobalt fish erupted from the swells, attacking our left short-rigger bait about 30 feet behind the boat. It was a giant mako, somewhere between 600 and 800 pounds—best guess, it happened really quickly. The fish flew completely out of the water, flipped upside down and landed, leaving a truck-size hole in the ocean behind the boat. Roddy said, “Did you see that?” I yelled back something that I cannot write here. The mammoth mako peeled off most of the line on our 50-wide reel before deciding we weren’t fun anymore, let the lure go, and headed back to the deep. ¶ It was over in an instant, but I’ll never forget it.