Big fish
In his right hand, held as daintily as the handle of a teacup, is a length of 130-pound-test line strung to a Shimano Tiagra 130 reel and marlin rod, the angling equivalent of an elephant gun.
Pruner is intercepting a communique from the five-pound bait-fish working the sharp end of the line. It's darting, diving, running up on the boat. Message: predator on my tail.
"Get ready, Big John," says Pruner.
John Bullo stirs toward the fighting chair.
Captain Gene Vanderhoeck, running the boat from a tower chair 12 feet above the deck, spots the marlin 30 yards out. "She's all lit up!" shouts Cap'n Gene. When a marlin strikes, adrenaline causes its skin to flush, which makes the fish glow electric blue. It's as if it were lit from within.
Pruner gives the line three teasing jerks. The marlin strikes.
"We're bit!" he yells.
Scotty, Big John and Cap'n Gene brace themselves and wait. A marlin nabs its prey, in this case a mackerel, from behind, but then turns it in its mouth so it slides headfirst down the gullet. Yank the rod too early, and the mackerel will pop out of the marlin's mouth. Rookie mistake.
And in Bisbee's Black & Blue Marlin Jackpot Tournament, the richest marlin-fishing contest in the world, that could be a million-dollar screw-up.
The marlin turns. The line comes taut.
"Start cranking!" yells Cap'n Gene. Big John, strapped into the fighting chair, reels in as the captain throttles up, torquing the hook through the marlin's cheek.
Big John's reel heats up. "It's really peeling line!" he cries. "It's OK," says his fishing partner, 2001 World Billfish Series (WBS) champion Bruce Bosley. "We've got half a mile of line. She's not gonna spool it."
Bosley and Bullo, construction equipment brokers from Washington, are the odd couple of bill-fishing. The trim Bosley stands at the stern, his pleated shirt tucked neatly into belted shorts, scanning the horizon like a general surveying a battlefield.
Bullo Oscar to Bosley's Felix fishes in an undershirt and a Bud cap that might have been swiped from a vagrant.
Ten minutes into the fight the marlin shoots straight out of the water and tail-walks, writhing in an attempt to shake the hook.
"Holy s!" says Pruner. "That ain't no little rat back there."
No, it ain't. It's a money fish.
By the time Big John brings the marlin beside the boat, the fish is spent. Half an hour earlier it could have driven its bill through the boat at 50 mph. Now it lies in the water on its side, staring up at Go Deep's crew with an eye the size of a golf ball.
Cap'n Gene, peering down from the tower, sniffs danger. This is when sharks come around for a snack. "Get that goddam fish in the boat now!" he yells.
Pruner and 29-year-old deckhand Jared Dow slide the nine-foot marlin through the stern door. The fish is so big that there's hardly room for them to stand. But time's a-wasting. The Mexican sun dehydrates the marlin with every passing minute, causing it to lose weight.
In the Bisbee the heaviest fish wins. Twenty seconds after the marlin is boated, Cap'n Gene has Go Deep running wide open for the dock, while Pruner bales buckets of water onto the fish. As the marlin dies, its brilliant blue skin fades to black.
At the weigh station, tournament director Wayne Bisbee hoists the marlin on an enormous scale. He double-checks the electronic readout, then announces, "We have a new tournament leader."
A crowd of sunburned gringos cheers, but before anyone can congratulate the Go Deep team, it scrambles for the boat.
"We'll celebrate later," says Pruner. "This tournament ain't over." There is a bigger marlin out there.
Every October the marlin world's biggest names and most outrageous characters converge on Cabo San Lucas to battle bow-to-stern (this year's tournament begins today). The stakes are high: You pay $5,000 just to enter.
The optional daily pools - "that's where the real money is," says Bosley - can run a team's entry fee to more than $18,000. The pay-outs, however, are spectacular. Two years ago the winning team, with a single fish, walked away with $989,910.
The egos outweigh the money.
During Bisbee week, 60-foot yachts choke Cabo harbour; private jets idle at Los Cabos International Airport; and the sidewalks swell with CEOs, world champion marlin fishermen and young tycoons puffing Cohibas, knocking back $40 tequila shots and snapping up $125 custom lures.
Testosterone wafts down the malecon, Cabo's boardwalk, like secondhand smoke.
A magical aura surrounds the idea of the money fish. Oh, what a man could do with that cash. Problems solved, dreams fulfilled, wrists Rolexed.
"They all think they're gonna be millionaires," Wayne Bisbee, whose father founded the contest in 1982, says with a laugh.
"Course, most of them already are."
Of the 148 boats, about 40 with seasoned teams have a legitimate shot at landing a money fish. "The veterans plan all year just to fish these three days," says Bosley. "This is the Super Bowl of bill-fishing."
"Ah wanta lobstah! Biggest y'all got!" Rick Kolander, captain of the Texas Marlin Maniacs, who won the previous year's Bisbee, is ordering dinner. "Aw, that 'un's a snack," he says of the waiter's first offering. "How about steak to go with it? You got filet mignon?"
This is what it means to win the Bisbee: lobster, steak, and ... what was that last item, senor? "Shivus!" Kolander says. The waiter doesn't have a clue. "You know, Shivus!" repeats the diner, a Texas car dealer.
A consultation with the maitre d' solves the riddle: lobster, steak and Chivas Regal.
The Texas Marlin ManiacsKolander and his Sour Lake, Texas, buddies Scott Monroe and Bobby Turnerare on a mission. They feel their $684,265 victory in 2001 wasn't given due respect.
"This is a Southern California tournament," says Kolander. "They like us Texas boys to put up our money and get out of the way."
This year the Maniacs came to represent, amigo. All week they prowl Cabo in matching TEXAS MARLIN MANIACS shirts, dine well and talk a little Lone Star State smack. "Nobody's ever won it twice," says Kolander. "We aim to repeat."
There are 147 teams aiming to stop them. Chief among them is the Go Deep duo, Bosley and Bullo. They followed up Bosley's 2001 WBS championship by ripping up the bill-fishing circuit. Bosley and Bullo are one of the hottest fishing teams in the world.
What they need is money. "It's an expensive habit," says Bullo, who figures it costs about $8,000 a day to fish the Bisbee. He and Bosley are small-town businessmen in a rich man's sport. They need a win to stay in the game.
If the Maniacs are fishing for respect, then Picante Dream and Picante Pride are out for redemption. Winning the Bisbee is a matter of pride for these flagships of Cabo's leading charter fleet. This is their home court. Their captains are Mexican - no small thing in a contest dominated by swaggering norte-americanos.
Last year Picante Dream had the leading fish until the last hour of the tournament, when the Maniacs hooked their 518-pounder.
This year second place will not do.
Day 1: Ten seconds before the 8am starting gun, 148 boats jockey for position along an imaginary line stretching from El Arco, the postcard arch at the tip of Baja, across the two-mile-wide bay toward the Sea of Cortez. Go Deep, one of the smaller craft in the contest, runs tight circles around the lumbering yachts.
"Five ... four ... three...." Radio announcer Rico Torres counts down the seconds, but the roar of 100,000 horses drowns out the shotgun pop.
Cabo Harbour churns. Vanderhoeck threads Go Deep between two yachts and sprints for the Outer Gorda Bank, a shelf 25 miles due east of Cabo San Lucas. Three minutes into the tournament, the entire field trails in her wake.
"She's small," says Cap'n Gene, smiling, "but she's fast." Speed is key to Go Deep's game plan. "You need a fast boat and a crew that knows how to handle really big marlin," Bosley says. He and Bullo found their crew when they went fishing with Pruner three years ago in Kona, Hawaii.
Cap'n Gene, 48, boasts 33 years of marlin experience. Twenty-seven world-record fish have been caught on his boat. Remember Quint, the old shark-chaser played by Robert Shaw in Jaws? Cap'n Gene is like his socially adept younger brother. With Cap'n Gene come his proteges, Pruner and Dow.
Team Go Deep is live baiting marlin by 8:45, before most boats reach the fishing ground. Forty-five minutes later, pay dirt.
"Bit!" Pruner yells. "Guys, we're bit!" Bosley and Bullo alternate in two-hour shifts. Bullo drew the opening session, so he straps into the chair.
It's a quick fight. Eight minutes after hookup, Bullo releases a 275-pound blue marlin. Most marlin tournaments are tag-and-release, but because the Bisbee is a "kill tournament," it has a strict weight minimum. A team that boats a sub-300-pound fish loses both points and honour.
Only humans hunt marlin. Sharks won't take one on unless it's wounded. Cap'n Gene's boys have watched a 600-pound marlin club a shark with its bill, then spear it and shred it.
Two years ago a small blue marlin Bullo had hooked in Bora Bora jumped into his boat, slit the captain's belly with its bill, then knocked the man unconscious by cracking him across the head with the lure. (Stitched up, he was back on the boat that afternoon.)
When marlin men dream, they dream about beating one man: Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Fifty years ago Glassell, then a 40-year-old Houston oilman, boated the largest bony fish ever caught, a 1,560-pound black marlin hooked off the coast of Peru.
The fish was 16 feet long. Bigger marlin have been spotted - 2,000-pounders are said to lurk off the coast of Australia - but none have been caught.
What's mind-blowing about Glassell's fish is that to see it, all you have to do is visit the local video store. The marlin that shreds Spencer Tracy's hands in The Old Man and the Sea? That's Glassell's grander-and-a-half. Glassell had a filmmaker aboard and allowed the footage to be spliced into the movie.
At five o'clock Radio Rico announces the day's end: "Hooks out!" Pruner stands and watches a school of flying fish hiss across the evening chop.
"This is the spot," he says. "I can't f wait to get back here."
Day 2: As Go Deep sprints back to the Gorda Bank, the 72-foot Go Fisch lumbers out of the harbour at a more leisurely pace.
Among the fleet's biggest yachts, Go Fisch has an air-conditioned wet bar, and the strategy of its team is suitably relaxed. "Let's have fun, and if something crazy happens, it happens," says boat owner Chris Fischer.
The 35-year-old Fischer doesn't need to win to keep fishing. A Louisville native, he retired from the family business, a vending machine company, at 29 when the family sold it for $70 million.
The kid answered the What Next? question by purchasing this floating mansion, a long-range cruising yacht with three staterooms, a gourmet kitchen, a carpeted dining room and satellite TV. Now Chris and his wife, Melissa, produce an ESPN show, Offshore Adventures, based on their free-floating lifestyle.
Fishing from this boat feels like hunting deer from a Rolls-Royce. The owner, however, seems to do little actual fishing. Fischer tries to stay out of the way of his crew, to whom, he admits, the Bisbee means much more than it does to him.
"It's a chance for them to match themselves against their colleagues and make a big pay check," he says. Yet when a marlin strikes there's no question about who'll reel it in: Fischer.
This upstairs-downstairs dynamic isn't limited to Go Fisch. The Bisbee may be the most purely capitalist tournament in all of sports. The angler, defined as the guy who reels in the fish, is expected to do two things: finance the operation and not screw up in the fighting chair.
The crew finds the fish, baits the lines, works the boat, manoeuvres the leader, gaffs the marlin and hauls it aboard. Most anglers make a point of spreading the credit.
It's a team sport, they say. It's all about your crew. Well, it is all about your crew - until it comes time to divide the jackpot.
The agreed-upon split aboard Go Fisch is typical. After subtracting expenses (primarily fuel and his $18,000 entry fees), half the boat's winnings go to Fischer, and the other half is divided among the captain and crew. It's a principle as old as Adam Smith: He who risks the money reaps the rewards.
Here's another ancient truth: The money means the most to those who receive the smallest shares. What happened to the Texas Marlin Maniacs' jackpot? Kolander built himself a new swimming pool.
Monroe and Turner banked their dough. For their crew, however, it was a life-changing payday. Before the tournament, Stimulator owner and captain Jay Bush faced having to sell his boat because post-Sept. 11 travel fears had wiped out his business.
Now he's the hottest captain in Cabo. One deckhand put his son through college. Another moved his family from a shanty to a new house.
And sometimes, who doesn't win the money can be as important as who does. Consider the saga of Blackfin Donnie Lovett. The 52-year-old skipper was scheduled to fish the Bisbee on the Felina, a renowned Cabo marlin boat.
Blackfin Donnie, like a lot of locals, doesn't compete on his own boat because the $5,000 ante is too rich for his blood. On the eve of the start, however, the Felina's captain booted Donnie and gave his slot to a friend.
While processing his grief at a local cantina, Donnie ran into his friend Jerry Muntz, Go Fisch's gruff deckhand. Muntz relayed Donnie's predicament to his boss. Fischer didn't hesitate. "Bring him aboard," he told Muntz. It is a joy and a privilege to fish with Blackfin Donnie.
An old hippie who wandered down to Cabo in the 1970s and forgot to leave, he cheerily tutors a couple of passengers on the subtle attractions of marlin lures while, hour after hour, they fail to attract marlin. On the radio, though, the action is heating up.
Go Deep reports a hookup at 10:30, and 45 minutes later it's running to the dock with a 418-pounder.
Picante Dream and Picante Pride both release small striped marlin. The Texas Marlin Maniacs are conspicuously quiet.
In the late afternoon a strange call comes over the radio. A boat's hooked up with a marlin; details to come. An hour later comes the follow-up.
The radio is full of snow, so it's hard to make out, but it sounds as if the captain is saying, "We have the fish.... Tournament is over." Which is about the ballsiest thing anyone associated with this ballsy tournament has ever heard.
"Somebody is f with us," grumbles Jerry the deckhand. "Who called it in?" Go Fisch captain Brett McBride hesitates. Finally he says it, "Felina."
BLACKFIN Donnie turns as white as a ghost. If this is the tournament winner, the true money fish, it could mean $50,000 for each member of the Felina crew. One of whom was Blackfin Donnie.
Until yesterday. Muntz tries to console his friend. "No matter what happens, buddy, you and me are gonna be drinking beers on the beach and laughing at the end of the week." Donnie listens slack-jawed.
The Bisbee advances like evolution: nothing, nothing, then enormous changes in an instant.
At five o'clock, while the Marlin Maniacs pray for a miracle, and the Go Deep team waits to see if its fish will take the daily pool, and Blackfin Donnie ponders the karmic bus that just ran over him, the radio crackles with news from the weigh station.
The Felina has hung its fish. It is shamefully underweight. "Two hundred fifty-one pounds!" says Blackfin Donnie, beaming.
He performs an exultant jig. "Two hundred fifty-one, verified!" Day three: Will Go Deep's fish hold up? "Four-eighteen is a medium-size fish," says Pruner. "You've got 148 teams. It's not going to be devastating when it happens."
It happens early. The Go Deep team hasn't even made bait when it hears the call: Picante Dream has boated a big one.
At 10:30 it's official: 439 pounds. "Well," says Cap'n Gene, "now we gotta catch a bigger one." Nobody's crying for Go Deep. Its marlin swept yesterday's daily pool. Regardless of what happens today, the boat will keep $387,000. If it holds second overall, it'll walk away with another $100,000.
The Picante Dream's fish holds up. The locals are redeemed. With open arms Picante fleet president Phil Gentile greets Hank Deviney, the Houston businessman who reeled the fish in. "You have no idea what this means to us," Gentile says.
Deckhand Jerry has gone AWOL from Go Fisch. Word has it that he's on a beach somewhere laughing and drinking beer with Blackfin Donnie.
Go Deep's winnings: $486,530. The team will fish another day. In fact, because the Picante Dream wasn't entered in all the daily pools, its team takes home less money - $470,420 - than Go Deep's.
Cap'n Gene is already hungry to get back at it. As the sun sets behind the scrub hills of Cabo, the old marlin man drains a bottle of Pacifico and ponders the monster blue that may one day break
Alfred Glassell's record. "A 400-pounder is a wonderful thing to catch at the right time," Cap'n Gene says, "but in the big scheme of things, that's small. Godzilla's still out there."
(c) Time Inc 2003, from Sports Illustrated magazine, all rights reserved.
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