Tuna Fishing with the Fairbanks Brothers and Friends

By Karl DeHart

I woke Saturday September 1^st, 2007 on a couch with my first semi-conscious thoughts racing to a place 1500 or more miles from where I was. I was in basement in Anapolis, Maryland at Bill and Shannon Fairbanks and it was around 6 a.m. My thoughts were on all the people I know who would be rising from restless nights for the first day of the bird season in Idaho. I was thinking about the process, the morning routine that we all have gone through so many times and often half asleep. But not on opening morning, we are always wide awake and eager to get the day started on this first morning. The gun is in the rig, the dog is loaded, the lunch is packed and all the other pieces of the morning routine are done. With the mental checklist complete you are ready to go.

The sounds of Kiwi and Bill chatting upstairs brought me out of my dreamy stupor. With a half-cocked smile my focus changed to the adventure I was here to enjoy. A few months back my buddy Kiwi called about a tuna fishing trip out of Ocean City, Maryland. His family lives in Baltimore and we would fly back and head out with his brothers and their friends for an overnight deep-sea fishing trip. All arrangements made, all I had to do was show up, oh yeah and fork over some cash. I was pretty excited especially when he said it was going to be late August. At the last minute the plans had to be changed and suddenly I was missing the opening weekend of Idaho’s upland bird season. I was sure fighting a large tuna would make me feel a little better about missing the hunt.

Everyone was due at Bill’s house at 8 a.m. I looked at the clock and the dark lumps of my bags packed and ready for the trip and decided I really didn’t need to get up until right before it was time to go. The couch was warm and I tried to roll away from the lights to see if I could fall back to sleep; Kiwi would wake me up in plenty of time. I relaxed under the blankets for another 15 minutes trying to slip back into a dream. I finally got up knowing that there was no way my anticipation to get this adventure started was going to let me fall back asleep.

The guys started to filter in; Headboard (Dave), Blaine and Shawn. We were going to meet three guys at the marina. Headboard showed up with some disturbing news, the captain of the boat we booked didn’t know we were scheduled for an overnight trip! On top of that during his conversation with the owners it looked like there were some weather issues brewing. It was absolutely beautiful in Baltimore but what we couldn’t see were the heavy seas of our destination 75 miles out to sea. This issue put a whole interesting twist on the mood of the morning. We decided to head down anyway and work things out once we got there.

The boat we booked pulled in at its expected time in the afternoon. Adding to our excitement the crew who booked the ride came off with 5 long-fin tuna. But all this came with the news that the waters were to rough to go back out for the night. A little hard to swallow for a group of eager guys standing in the sun watching a bunch of fish being pulled off of a boat. In the end our option was to stay the night on the boat at the marina and hope we could get out the next day at noon. This prompted a walk to the store for beer and to the marina shop for a couple fishing poles and bait. It was 3ish and we had lots of time to kill until the noon the next day.

We entertained ourselves fishing from the docks for a few hours, eating dinner and then sitting on the new expensive boat drinking beers and bullshitting. One by one we drifted to the cabin to find a spot to spend the night. For me sleeping on the boat was really relaxing.

Noon finally found us. We all stood at the back of the boat watching as we pulled out from the marina and bay. For me the anticipation I felt waking yesterday morning came back 10 fold. Here it was; this thing I had waited for since July and almost lost to the weather and poor scheduling of the boat owners.

If you’ve never been on a boat like this it’s an interesting experience. It was unexpectedly loud. I had envisioned the noise from the water but not the overwhelming roar of the big engine and old rock playing constantly from the speakers. The other thing I pictured was getting seasick as soon as we hit the open water. Luckily I faired better then one of our mates who stated pretty emphatically that this was his last tuna fishing trip.

We started trolling about 3 p.m. There were 12 lines in the water in short order. It was interesting for me because I had never tried trolling before. What amazed me is how close to the back of the boat the attractors and bait actually were. Essentially all but the two back baits were within the wake of the boat. I had a hard time picturing a fish smacking these lures that close to the boat. Unfortunately the fish didn’t try to prove me wrong either. We trolled until dark with only one White Marlin making a half-hearted attempt at one of the back lures.

I mentioned the worry of getting seasick. It was dark when the boat finally settled to rolling gently with the waves. It only took a couple minutes of watching the distant lights of other boat bob up and down for me to race towards the edge of the boat. My mouth was watering, my gut was churning and my skin was crawling and getting moist with anticipation of what would happen in a few seconds. Up came the beers and sandwiches in my stomach. It only took a few heaves and I was fine. I’ll have to admit though after helping with chunking for the tuna with my stomach contents it was never easy to watch the lights of distant boats bobbing up and down. One good thing though, I had never thrown up in the Atlantic Ocean, so now I can mark that one off the list!

It was a long day already and the night and chunking brought some wanted distraction. The bait chunks were bringing in the occasional squid and other small fish. Catching the squid was essentially sight fishing. You’d wait until you saw one moving into the spotlight and cast a Rapalla type lure to it. These little creatures where amazingly fast when they wanted to catch your lure. The few that we caught were immediately hooked up to a heavy tuna rod and cast back out as bait themselves

Now the night went on an on. We didn’t have any action the entire night. The captain moved the boat a couple times and the deck hands worked hard chunking. The only other constant through the night was the blaring radio. Chris and Bill played a name the artist of each song for much of the time. Because of the lack of action we all filtered into the boat to search for a couple hours sleep under the blankets and on top of the pillows. I think we all found some. As I sat on the deck or took a turn at chunking it remained pretty quite. It was nice to visit a little hear and there but if the rest of the guys were experiencing what I was we were all anxiously waiting for that moment.

During the night the Captain got a report from another Captain about fish moving through their area. He immediately had the deck hands pull in all the gear and they weren’t doing it fast enough from what I understand, I was sound asleep in the cabin. We moved to the hot area. I don’t know how long we were there before I was woken because we had a fish on! When I walked to the back of the boat Kiwi was slumped over a pole wrestling with a tuna. It took awhile for the gaft to be sunk into the fish and pulled on the boat. It took longer to land the fish then it took Bill to take a knife to the fish and pull us out all some tenderloin cuts of raw fish. It was a delicious breakfast. As Kiwi pulled in his fish the sun started to come up.

We were all hoping for a hard run of a big school. It took a while before the second tuna was fighting on the end of the hook. Both our fish weighed in at about 75lbs. If you’ve never tried to land one of these steel-tough fish maybe watching the video clip of Chris fighting his fish will convey what it was like better than I can describe it. After a while Chris handed the pole off to me. It was much more of a fight than I had imagined. I think the most awkward part was trying to keep the heavy reel balanced enough to effectively crank it when needed.

The Captain was a little panicked in my opinion. All these hours on the boat and only two fish hooked. He hovered over each person as they fought the tuna, his hands moving towards the rod frequently but pulling back (or not) at the last minute or pushing down or up on the rod while directing us how to fight the fish without loosing them. I wondered if he wanted those fish in the boat more than we did.

But we landed two. It was surreal at this point in the back of the boat. We were all waiting for the next strike, drifting around the boat like ghosts. You could watch each person relax as the time rolled on without another fish. Pretty soon with the sun up we were back to trolling and everyone was back to sitting or leaning. We were relaxed again but still hoping for that next strike.

If I remember right it was some time after 8 p.m. and the professional chef of the group, Bill, had just finished laying out the meal for the evening. All but the French Green Beans were from our catch at sunrise; fresh. The spread was incredible. We were treated to Tuna Savichia, Tuna Tartar, 3 different types of rolls (spicy tuna, red pepper/cucumber/tuna and tuna only, seared tuna with sesame/lemon zest and then Tuna Tenderloin with cracked red pepper and seasoning salt. Talk about an amazing way to end an adventure. I have to admit it took until I laid back down to sleep for my mind to really race back to the bird hunting, at least this time satisfied with the adventure I did have.