 When
John Jetson saw it, his heart skipped a beat. Something
from the depths had erupted to the surface creating
a hole in the crystal blue water 15 feet across. Everyone
aboard Jetson’s Fort Pierce-based Huzzy knew
instantly what had happened, yet no one wanted to
admit it: the large trolled lure in the wake of the
55-foot Viking had just been swiped at - and missed
- by a gargantuan fish.
For
some big game tournament fishing teams, that jaw-dropping
splash and dash may be the only glimpse they ever
get of one of the deep blue sea’s most majestic
predators. But for Jetson’s crew, this past
June 20 was its lucky day. Before they could get the
lure reeled in to check its condition, the TLD 80-wide
that had been clipped into the right long rigger was
slammed. Instantly, the big reel began dumping 100-pound
test Sufix line into the propwash. Despite the crew’s
speed and finesse, angler Trey Thofner watched helplessly
as the hi-visibility yellow color of the fishing line
went away into the ocean only to be replaced by the
metallic shine of the reel’s spool. There’s
only one beast that swims capable of doing this to
a well-heeled team of fishermen: a blue marlin as
big as a Volkswagen.
“We
almost got spooled,” said Jetson, a Treasure
Coast sportsman who devotes much of his free time
to the pursuit of big blue marlin. “We saw the
spool - I’ll bet we only had 50 “We almost
got spooled,” cranks of line left on it.”
“It couldn’t have been more than a minute
and she had us into the gold,” said Huzzy Capt.
David Van Dyke of Fort Pierce. “Just like that
- 750 yards of line were gone.” “We had
43 pounds of drag on it - in the corner - trying to
slow it down,” he added. “I swear, it
looked like it was in freespool.” Until the
marlin chose to stop peeling line, Team Huzzy was
feeling like it had brought a knife to a gunfight.
But when the big girl flinched, Thofner wasted little
time punching back.
The
hookup took place at 8:50 a.m. on the final day of
the Boat Harbour Championship - the final leg of the
2003 Bahamas Billfish Championship tournament series.
Based on the adrenaline-laced first impression, Jetson
knew that if his son could outlast this fish, and
they could get it to the scales, Huzzy might have
a shot at placing in the prestigious tournament. Clipped
into his harness in the fighting chair, Thofner focused
on the game of inches. Unable to render any assistance,
fellow teammates Van Dyke, Thofner’s cousin
Adam Thofner, and mate Zan Gonano set about the task
of making sure nothing went wrong at the boat level.
Jetson
and Van Dyke were gratified that the location paid
off with the bite they were looking for.
“Adam had caught and released a blue that went
about 325 the day before in the same place,”
said Jetson, referring to a place 23 miles northeast
of Boat Harbour known as the Table Tops. “That
morning, as we neared the T Tops, I saw two frigate
birds diving and chasing each other close to the water.
Then I saw the stormy petrels and terns working the
water where flying fish and other bait were popping
up. Then I noticed a change in water temperature of
0.3 degrees. I said to the guys, ‘This is it!
This is where she lives!"
Huzzy
was all by its lonesome within two miles of the Table
Top when the big girl struck. Most of the fleet of
74 had run to the south to a spot that was producing
fish earlier in the week. “Mr. Jetson and I
had talked about it the night before,” Van Dyke
said. “We felt good about that area. We caught
the one fish and missed another there, so we knew
we wanted to go back there.” “But we were
going to be hero or zero there,” Van Dyke admitted.
“So we stepped back and threw a Hail Mary.”
“It
was a great week for us leading into that last day,”
he said. “We had solid strategy, made some changes
in trolling rpm and rigging and basically got dialed
in. The last two days, it all came together for us.”
According to Van Dyke, a 400-pound marlin trashed
one of the team’s Black Barts the day before,
so he and Adam Thofner re-rigged it replacing the
12/0 hook with a 14/0 and re-doing the leader. Turned
out, that was the one Huzzy’s big girl came
back for the following day.
Trey
battled the blue tirelessly as it tried in vain to
lose the hook. Each time he gained back six inches
of line, she would take back four. According to Jetson
who piloted the boat during the fight, the big fish
was too big to launch itself on acrobatic aerial leaps.
When she was near the surface, she wallowed and heaved
instead. As the brawl entered its third hour, Thofner
was having to deal with dehydration and muscle fatigue.
In the fourth hour, the cramps started. “I can’t
give enough credit to Trey,” Van Dyke said.
“He hung in there and kept that fish on without
giving in. That fish was trying to pull him out of
the boat.” “We had the fish the wire six
times, but it was never ready,” said Jetson.
“I couldn’t believe how well my son held
up - he’s in great shape, works out a lot, and
has great endurance. He had over 100 pounds of pressure
on him for the entire time.”
The
ordeal reminded Jetson of a similar experience 20
years ago. During a BBC tournament out of Walker’s
Cay, Jetson hooked into a blue that was as big or
bigger - perhaps an elusive grander (over 1000 pounds).
Jetson pumped and cranked for five hours - ignoring
the fish-spooking distraction of a helicopter that
hovered overhead. According to Jetson, footage from
his own epic battle was used on a promotional program
for the Bahamas Billfish Championship that aired on
British television for years.As the sun began to get
low in the sky that day in 1983, the line connecting
Jetson to his fish of a lifetime simply snapped. The
setback only strengthened his commitment to the sport
of chasing big blues.
“I feel a lot of kinship with Ernest Hemingway
- both on and off the water,” said Jetson whose
office even contains a replica of Hemingway’s
famed fishing boat, Pilar. “I’m going
to go back to the Bahamas first chance I get to find
that grander. There has only been two blue marlin
over 1000 pounds caught in the Bahamas, and I know
there’s another one that lives there.”
Somewhere
after the 4-hour mark, Thofner’s trophy blue
sounded for the bottom, and died. The challenge shifted
from taming the wild beast to hauling close to a half-ton
of dead weight 2,000 feet up with 100-pound line.
Thofner was spent, but was forced to endure if the
team was to have any chance of recording the catch.
Jetson handed the controls of the Huzzy over to Van
Dyke. Van Dyke cautiously backed the boat to help
Thofner gain line - albeit a few turns of the handle
at a time. According to Van Dyke, it still took over
two hours to get the hulk to the surface. Van Dyke
said they cranked the drag down to a brutish 65 pounds.
During
this time, a multitude of things could have gone wrong.
Line could break. The angler can reach his breaking
point. Rods have snapped. Boats have backed over the
line. Boats have backed into the fish as it pops to
the surface - mutilating it with the propellers. Sharks.
Any one of these things, and all the Huzzy would have
been left with is a fish story.
But
the crew controlled the variables, and had one final
hurdle to clear - getting the big girl into the boat.
The blue could barely squeeze through the transom
door, but it’s no easy task dragging something
that big and heavy over the stern platform, and guiding
it through the door and into the cockpit. Van Dyke
was able to turn the boat downsea where he finally
got a 4-foot wave to help “float” the
marlin into the cockpit. After sharing the news over
the VHF radio, the Huzzy steamed for the marina.
On
the scale, the weighmaster announced 814 pounds for
Team Huzzy and angler Trey Tofner. It was the largest
marlin of the 2003 Bahamas Billfish Championship,
the largest marlin caught out of Boat Harbour since
2000, and the eighth largest blue marlin ever caught
in the island nation. For their efforts, Jetson and
his crew was presented with the Allied Richard Bertram
Marine Group trophy for the largest blue caught during
the series this year.
Naturally,
the trophy is a bronze sculpture that depicts Hemingway’s
“Old Man and the Sea.”
“I’m so proud of Trey and of the whole
team for the way it all went,” Jetson said.
“It was really something to be able to watch
my son avenge my loss from 20 years earlier.”
Despite the heartbreak in 1983, Jetson has enjoyed
his share of top five finishes. Trophies commemorate
fantastic finishes at Chub Cay, Walker’s, Treasure,
Bimini, the Bacardi, the Hemingway Classic in Cuba,
Stuart’s Light Tackle Sailfish Tournament.
For
Jetson, a change in tackle may be forthcoming. The
Huzzy may be outfitted with 130’s and Van Dyke
even made mention of possibly using braided lines
for backing to allow for spooling of more line.“I
don’t ever want to see the spool again,”
said Jetson. With the majority of the Bahamian billfish
season behind us now, it appears that Sam Jennings
1979 record blue of 1,060.5 pounds will stand another
year. Or at least until Jetson gets another crack
at it.
Note: Jetson and crew are back it again in 2004 fishing the BBC’s with Fort Pierce’s Capt. Mike Everly at the helm of Huzzy.
::BIG BBC BLUES::
(record and heaviest since 1996)
1,060.5 pounds, Sam Jennings, Bimini, Bahamian record, July 1979
1,030 pounds, Rick Smith, Weekend Hooker, Treasure Cay, 1996
823 pounds, Rocky Cassone, Unbelievable, Boat Harbour, 2000
814 pounds, Trey Thofner, Huzzy, Boat Harbour, June 2003
::BBC 2003 - NUMBERS
Fished by 105 teams this year
240 billfish were caught - most released
182 were blue marlin, 42 white marlin, and 16 sailfish
The BBC title sponsor - Rolex - offered a $1 million bonus if the Bahamian
record of 1060.5 pounds was broken, which it was not
This was the 30th anniversary of the BBC making the oldest tournament
series in the world
For more information about the Bahamas Billfish Championship visit www.bahamasbillfish.com |
