Strike
Three! And Three Sailfish for
Catfish and Mel
by Vic
Dunaway, Florida Sportsman, July
1975
Jim "Catfish" Hunter
heaved back on the fishing rod and
brought it momentarily to a
near-vertical position, but
instantly it plunged downward again
despite Hunter's most muscular
protests.
"Hot dog!", exclaimed
the New York Yankees'
three-million-dollar pitcher.
"What a fish that
is!"
His line was pointing straight
down off the stern; the rod tip
throbbing and bucking in the
non-rhythmic manner that identified
his foe as an unhappy
amberjack. With 30-pound line
and a fairly stout drag, the
struggle was highly physical, and
Hunter was highly excited.
"Hope I don't lose this
baby," he said.
"It'll be the biggest fish I
ever caught."
"What's your biggest up to
now?" asked Jim Hardin, our
skipper.
"Thirty pounds," Hunter
said in a sort of gasp as he leaned
back on the rod, trying to prod the
fish upward.
Gradually the amberjack
yielded. A short time later,
Hardin stretched over and sank the
gaff. He lifted, and the fish
cleared the gun'l so that Hunter was
able to get his first look.
His eyes widened between the
familiar bushy hair and handlebar
moustache.
Garr and all, the amberjack would
barely clear 15 pounds.
Simultaneously pleased and
disappointed, Hunter nevertheless
gamely answered the obvious question
that followed the catch: What was
the identity of his 30-pound
personal record?
"A sturgeon," he
staid. "Dom DiMaggio took
me out fishing for them in San
Francisco Bay. It didn't pull
anything like this fish,
though. And was it an ugly
sonofagun!"
Anyway, it was good to have a
fish in the boat. Whether the
sailfish proved cooperative or not,
Jim Hunter had his first saltwater
catch in Florida, and it was at
least his best catch for power if
not poundage.
Hunter and another veteran
pitching staff, Mel Stottlemyre, had
driven to Crandon Park that
afternoon following their morning
workout at the Yankees' spring
training camp at Fort
Lauderdale. Hardin and I
already had loaded the livewell with
blue runners before we picked up the
baseballers. No time would
have to be spent fishing for bait,
and Hardin likes the late afternoon
period best for sails anyway.
Chances didn't look bad at all, but
on a half-day outing, even in the
most productive of times, there's
always a big doubt.
Regardless of prospects, the two
were pleased enough just to be out
on the water. Both are great
outdoorsmen, Stottlemyre lives
in Washington state, and his
favorite fish out that way is the
steelhead. He likes salmon
too, but that fishing season doesn't
coincide too well with the baseball
season. During his years as
the Yankees' leading ace, he had the
opportunity to do quite a bit of
spring fishing in South Florida -
most of it for bass in the
Everglades Conservation Areas and
canals, but with an occasional salty
outing tossed in. He had
fished before with Hardin, and
captured an extra-hefty 68-pound
sailfish.
Hunter has fished mostly for
striped bass and largemouth bass in
his home waters of North
Carolina. Certainly, the hope
of nabbing a sailfish was high in
his thoughts that day, but he
probably would have been happy to
spend a few hours on the Dead Sea,
so long as the hordes of reporters
were unable to reach him.
Newsworthy enough as the Cy Young
Award winner and money pitcher for
the three-time-world-champion
Oakland Athletics, he became the
hottest item on sports pages as the
first major-leaguer ever to shed a
contract at the peak of his career
and offer his services on the open
market.
The result eventually was a
contract with the Yankees, valued at
three-million dollars - and a trying
few months for Hunter, since the
limelight got mighty hot.
"I saw more reporters in the
woods last season than game,"
lamented the belegured ace, who
likes hunting even better than
fishing. "I'd get out
there with the dogs and figure there
couldn't be another human being for
miles around. Then, first
thing, a reporter would step out
from behind a tree and start asking
questions."
The barrage of interview
continued, of course, in spring
training. When Hardin visited
camp a day earlier to issue the
fishing invitation, he had to stand
in line behind eight writers.
Hardin himself is a former
major-leaguer who spent six years
pitching in the big time, and got
into a pair or World Series with the
Baltimore Orioles. He finished
his short career as a sore-armed
teammate of Stottlemyre's with the
Yanks.
As a Miami-area fisherman, Hardin
mopped up awards right and left -
including the coveted Master Angler
Trophy in the Metropolitan Miami
Fishing Tournament - before tacking
up his skipper's license. He
guides from a 24-foot center-console
fisherman built by P&D boats of
Hialeah. Although he goes
after everything that swims out
there, and with any kind of tackle,
his pet system in kite-fishing, and
it was via this approach that he
planned to produce a sail for
Catfish Hunter.
First there was the matter of the
amberjack, for catch-insurance
only. Now the kite reel came
out, and the kite was sent aloft,
carrying only one fishing line with
it.
"There isn't enough breeze
to use two baits on the kite,"
Hardin explained. "You
fellows will have to take
turns."
Hunter listened intently as the
skipper explained the kite system:
"The fishing line is clipped to
this clothespin on the kit
line. We fly the kite away
from the boat and it carries out the
line and the live blue runner.
We can adjust the fishing line up or
down by letting more line from the
reel or cranking some in. What
we try to do is keep that bait right
on top of the water - just give him
barely enough room to breathe.
He kicks up a fuss on the surface,
and the noise can attract sailfish
from pretty far away."
Entranced by the unusual angling
style, Hunter watched his bait like
a cat watching a sparrow.
Stottlemyre picked up a spare
spinning outfit and I fixed it up
with a heavy jig so he could probe
the bottom. Nothing happened,
up or down, for about 15
minutes. Then Mel grunted and
reared back to set his hook in what
appeared to be a heavy
grouper. He tried his best to
coax the fish any way but down;
however, that was the only direction
his adversary would have. The
most Mel could do was hold on and
complain.
Naturally, the rest of us turned
our attention his way and because a
rooting and hooting section.
And just as naturally, our first
sailfish chose the moment of
distraction to take the bait.
Perhaps it was sixth sense that
caused Hardin to look toward the
other side of the boat and see the
line slicing water and pulling the
kite down with it. He yelled a
warning to Catfish, who grabbed the
rod just as the line pulled out of
the pin.
"Don't bother to
strike. Just reel!" he
ordered. Hunter obeyed the
command. As the line
tightened, a sailfish exploded not
50 feet away, churning foam. A
second jump followed so quickly that
it seemed like a bounce.
Awed by his first glimpse of a
bounding sailfish at close quarters,
Hunter stopped reeling to
gape. But it didn't matter
much, for the fish shifted gears and
sizzled out across the
Atlantic. Catfish responded
properly, an din the only way
possible, by holding the rod up and
listening for a while to drag music.
The fish was a big one, eight
feet or more. On 20-pound line
he put on a blazing performance,
with three power runs interspersed
by far-out jumps. Hunter had
thought his tussle with the
amberjack was adventurous. Now
he managed only a gasp and an
occasional "would you look at
this."
Mel and his grouper were ignored,
except when Catfish had to scramble
around him to follow the arcing path
of the sail. In all the
hubbub, the grouper made it to his
favorite cavern anyway, leaving Mel
with a broken line and Catfish with
a clear field of battle.
The fish settled after
awhile. Hunter set up a smooth
pump-and-retrieve tempo as if he had
been fishing this way for
years. When the sail finally
came close, it dashed parallel to
the keel and hung roughly amidships,
digging with its tail just enough to
deadlock the situation at that
point. The leader was within
reach of a long stretch.
Hardin debated taking it.
"I think the fish is still a
little green," he said.
"If I grab the leader, the
might be able to tear the hook
out."
Pondering the problem, Hardin
finally decided to use the
gaff. He gave the leader one
haul with his left hand, and with
his right extended the eight-foot
gaff and sank the point in the
sail's back.
The great dorsal flapped out of
the water fully extended, its owner
lunging savagely away. For an
instant I wondered whether Hardin
would go over the side or turn loose
the gaff. But he dug his knees
against the side of the boat and
held on.
The violence subsided a bit,
allowing the skipper to get his
other hand on the bill. He
walked the prize to the bow and slid
it inside.
Catfish came cautiously forward
to examine his trophy and, after it
was pacified, to hold it aloft for
pictures.
"Doggone it," Mel
said. "I think you got
mine beat."
"I've never seen your
sailfish," laughed
Hunter. "But I know it
couldn't be any bigger than this
one."
(It turned out later, according
to Hardin - the skipper and umpire -
that the two fish in question
measured exactly the same, 96
inches. Better make that
skipper, umpire and diplomat.)
We popped some cans to toast the
victory, and then the kite went up
again. It was about five
o'clock. Hardin thought there
might be time to get another
one. We had started off
Triumph Reef outside Elliot Key, and
hadn't yet drifted far toward Fowey
Light. The entire stretch is
good for sails. We were in
120-150 feet.
Although I don't remember why,
the second strike also came
unnoticed, and again was brought to
our attention by the moving line and
dipping kite. Not until
several long seconds after Mel
announced contact, as a matter of
face, were we sure it was another
sailfish. That revelation came
when the aerial display finally
began.
It was another good one - only a
couple of inches shorter than the
first on later measurement, and
certainly no less wild. At
least for the first few
minutes. It must have jumped
10 times, but later it stayed under
and the zippy runs turned into a
tug-of-war.
Mel pumped it to the transom tail
first. During its gyrations it
had become tail-wrapped in the
leader, and this, unfortunately, was
its death-knell. Since it was
beyond survival, Hardin billed it
aboard. Catfish and Mel posed
in the bow for a double portrait.
The score is Stottlemyre 2,
Hunter 1," Hardin announced.
"Yeah," Catfish came
back "But you're counting last
season."
The catch had been handled so
quickly that enough time remained to
try again.
"I can't ask for any
more," Catfish said.
"But I sure would like to see
one of those fish take the
bait." I had been telling
him about the excitement of watching
the strike - when you see the fish
chasing his dinner, waving his sail
around in the air like a toreador's
cape. But despite my buildup,
both our strikes had been delivered
quickly and quietly, while we
weren't looking.
That day, King Neptune must have
been writing the script. Not
more than 15 minutes later, I
spotted an abrupt boil near the
bait. I yelled for
attention. All eyes were on
the scene when a sail cleared the
surface, lunged once and missed,
lunge again and scored.
Hunter had not only seen what he
asked for , but now was tangled up
with our third sail in not much more
than an hour.
This was a little fellow, a
six-footer. Unable to peel off
the distance runs of his heftier
pals, he atoned for it by running
circle after circle around the boat,
anywhere from 100 feet to 100 yards
out, and jumping most of the way.
Gleefully, Catfish circled with
him, watching and enjoying every
leap. Hardin could have taken
the leader and ended the affair much
earlier, but he let the performance
go on for several somersaulting
encores.
The score because 2-2, if you
could last season. And Mel
insisted on counting it. Nor
was there any time to try a
tie-breaker. We pulled into
Crandon Park Marina as the sun went
down.
The weather had been almost
perfect - perhaps a little too good,
with only enough breeze to take out
one kite-bait. But one at a
time had been more than enough.
"It's not like this in San
Francisco," Catfish
noted. "I used to get out
salmon fishing now and then when I
was at Oakland. Soon as you
clear the Golden Gate Bridge, the
temperature drops away down and the
waves build away up."
He cast an admiring glance at his
taxidermist-bound sailfish.
"The fish out there are a
lot uglier, too," he said.
