Word: marlins
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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More of Everything. He should have gone to Pinas Bay. An isolated jungle inlet, 150 miles southeast of Panama City, Pinas (or Pineapple) Bay is the world's hottest marlin ground, better than Peru, better than New Zealand, Hawaii or the Bahamas. There, swarming around a bait-packed barrier reef seven miles offshore, are more different kinds of billfish, and more of each, than anybody has ever seen before: big Pacific sailfish in such profusion that fishermen consider them a nuisance, literally thousands of blue marlin, silver marlin, striped marlin and the lordly blacks...
...with all the comforts of home: his own amphibian plane service, air conditioning, plenty of ice and quinine water. He bought a fleet of ten sport-fishing boats, hired captains and crews from as far away as Jamaica. In the two years since Smith opened shop, hundreds of marlin have been pulled from Pinas Bay's waters, and Smith himself has one of five world records: a 186-lb. 8-oz. beauty, caught on 12-lb. test line-the equivalent, perhaps, of a 1.900-pounder on standard 130-lb. test. In one twelve-day span at Pinas last year...
Both Kneecaps. But they work for their prize. Not even a trout has a more jaundiced opinion of hooks. Blacks like live bait (a 5-lb. bonito does nicely), and they want it practically spoonfed to them. Some marlin will tail a bait for half an hour, only to decide that it isn't fishy enough; others give fishermen heart failure by enthusiastically grabbing the bait, then sourly spitting it out. But when the captain finally yells, "Sock him!", it's Katy bar the door. A few weeks ago at Pinas, an unprepared angler was yanked right over...
...great fish roars out of the water, sometimes jumping 12 ft. or more, as he goes raging and tail-walking across the ocean. The hook usually pulls clear at this point, or the rod breaks, or the line pops with a crack like a .38 pistol. If the marlin does decide to stay and dance awhile, he rolls in the wire leader, smashes away at it with his bill, swims off on long curving runs to get a slack "belly" in the line. If that fails, in shallow water he will sometimes jam his bill tightly into the sand...
...last resort, if the marlin is angry enough, he will even launch a banzai attack; virtually every boat in the Club de Pesca's fleet carries chunks of marlin bill embedded in its hull. Or the big black may simply outlast his tormentor. At Pinas Bay recently, a little lady from California battled a 900-lb. black marlin for nine solid hours, only to lose when darkness fell and crewmen were unable to gaff the fish...