By JASON NARK
Posted Wednesday, August 25, 2004
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Unlike the Florida Keys, the Outer Banks of North Carolina or even Cape May, Philadelphia is far from a fishing mecca. Penn, however, has been manufacturing rods and reels from its West Hunting Park Avenue warehouse for more than 70 years and its dominance in the sport is legendary - approximately 1,100 world records have been set by anglers using its reels. Far off the coast of New Jersey, where the cobalt blue water is 1,000 fathoms deep, muscled monsters cruise just beneath the surface, hunting.
They have names like Wahoo, Blue Marlin, and Bigeye Tuna, and many are larger and heavier than a fully-stocked refrigerator.
Biology, however, has blessed these swimming refrigerators with sword-like projections, retractable fins, and the rare ability to warm their blood and channel it to their brain, eyes, or muscles, giving them the power to make a 40 mph burst toward their prey.
These are fish that many men live to catch. "Catching a tuna is like hooking a freight train," said Mark Rosen, the 48-year-old owner of the Story Teller, a sport-fishing boat in Cape May. "They are fast, strong, and when they get hooked they are determined. They have to win every single time, you only have to win once. The odds are against you every time you hook one."
 This past week, hundreds of fishermen from around the globe gathered in Cape May and Ocean City, Md., to compete in what is touted to be, boat-for-boat, the world's wealthiest fishing tournament - The Mid-Atlantic $500,000. As impressive as that sounds, it's really a misnomer, considering the prize total exceeds $1.5 million.
The tournament, now in its 24th year, features multimillion dollar yachts equipped with military technology, professional fishing crews flown in from South America, and above all else, the fish. The Mid-Atlantic prize scale centers around White Marlin and its larger and more rare relative in the billfish family, the Blue Marlin. Other money fish in the tournament are Yellowfin and Bigeye Tuna, the torpedo-like Wahoo, and the multicolored Mahi Mahi. Trying
The concept of fishing is simple - a line-filled reel is connected to a long graphite or fiberglass rod. Live or dead bait, usually fish, is attached to a hook but anglers also use hooked lures, designed to look like a fish's favorite meal. When the fish bites and gets hooked, the angler reels the fish in and it is either released or, depending on species and regulations, taken home for weeks worth of dinners.
The sport, however, is called fishing, not catching. "You are essentially looking for a needle in the sea, not a haystack," said Peter Frederiksen, spokesman for Viking Yachts in New Gretna. "First you have to be lucky enough to run over top of one. Once you put the line in the water, you have to get them to bite too." Even if a fish does bite the odds are always in its favor, said Steven Evert, manager at Richard Stockton College's Marine and Environmental Science Field Station. "There's a ton of variables," said Evert. "Drag, tackle, angler skill, captain skill, and a little bit of luck all play a part."
Drag, which is the adjustable resistance on a fishing reel, is something anglers know all too well. If it's set too loose, a large tuna can strip the line off a reel in seconds; too tight and the line can snap just as quickly. Anglers can spend approximately $35 to $1,200 for a reel alone, said Brent Kane, Sales and Marketing Director for Penn Reels in Philadelphia.
Unlike the Florida Keys, the Outer Banks of North Carolina or even Cape May, Philadelphia is far from a fishing mecca. Penn, however, has been manufacturing rods and reels from its West Hunting Park Avenue warehouse for more than 70 years and its dominance in the sport is legendary - approximately 1,100 world records have been set by anglers using its reels.
John Graves has attended nearly every Mid-Atlantic $500,000 since it began, but his interest is academic not athletic. Graves, chairman of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science's Fisheries Science Department at the College of William & Mary, said tournament directors actually approached him with the offer to study their catches.
"I've been doing some work on billfish (marlin, swordfish, sailfish) so they gave me the opportunity to study them and talk to fishermen about where they were caught. There's just not that many opportunities to do that," said Graves.
When the fish are brought back to the weigh station at the Canyon Club Marina in Cape May each night, Graves and a team of graduate students check the weight, length, sex, and also takes tissue samples for his studies. He noted that the tournament anglers can't bring in White Marlin and Blue Marlin unless they weigh at least 60 and 400 pounds, respectively.
Graves said Blue Marlin are solitary creatures, often traveling 50 miles a day, while White Marlin travel in larger groups. When hooked, Graves said billfish often go airborne, violently swinging their head and tail to throw the hook. Tuna, on the other hand, make determined dives toward the sea's bottom. "Tuna won't jump, they'll just bulldog you," he said. Fighting
If the fish does stay hooked, and depending on the size of the equipment, an angler can fight a fish anywhere from three minutes to three hours. "You might bring in five feet of line, and the fish takes four. He gets up to the boat, sees the boat, and he dives down even harder," said Rosen. Unlike Graves, Evert is also a hard-core fisherman, working as a crewman on the Fish Trap, a sport-fishing charter boat out of Beach Haven. He said he has been on approximately 175 fishing trips and has seen Blue Marlin landed up to 500 pounds. He said deep-sea trips are often a mixture of tranquility and utter mayhem.
"It's great. You're away from the cell phone, you see a wide variety of sea life - whales, sea turtles, porpoise. But six hours of nothing going on can become minutes of chaos when a fish gets on," he said. Spending
Considering you might not even see a big fish the whole time, the $6,000 to $16,000 entry fee for the Mid-Atlantic $500,000 is quite a gamble. Compounding the price is the cost of fuel, which can range anywhere from $300 to $1,000 just to get the fishing grounds - they encompass a 125-mile radius outside of Cape May.
Most of the big-game fish off New Jersey waters, such as tuna and marlin, are usually found in the canyons - areas where the sea-floor rises sharply and brings nutrient-rich water flowing toward the surface. Those canyons range anywhere from 50 to 100 miles off the coast.
Rosen said he charges approximately $2,400 for an overnight tuna-fishing trip to the canyons but that money is divvied up on fuel, bait, and salaries for his mates, before he gets a profit. Although his 42-foot boat and equipment are valued at $300,000, Rosen said the Mid-Atlantic and its expenses are a little out of his league.
"This tournament is a whole nother species. These guys are professionals, they do this every day," said Rosen, a Battalion Chief for the Trenton Fire Department. "They are spending thousands of dollars each day they fish in this tournament." Looking
Once the boats arrive in their fishing grounds, finding fish becomes a science all its own. A mixture of eyesight, instinct, state-of-the art electronics, and more often than not, luck come in to play. Some boats utilize sonar, satellite imagery, and radar to locate flocks of sea birds that often accompany a large school of fish.
If the signs - water temperature, birds, baitfish - point toward fish, anywhere from five to 10 fishing lines are thrown into the water at various depths with plastic fish-like lures attached that can run $100 apiece. The boats then proceed to drive or troll the area, skipping the lures across the water to entice a fish to hit.
If fishermen do find a consistent patch of water that is producing fish, it is quickly marked on a global positioning satellite for future reference, and then all lips are sealed. At the nightly parties back at the marina, the atmosphere is relaxed, but you won't find out where people are catching fish.
"If you ask someone where they're fishing in the Mid-Atlantic, they'll tell you the Atlantic Ocean," said Frederiksen. When you're fishing in the Atlantic Ocean with a 74-foot Viking, however, the Atlantic is just a tad smaller. "It could get to the Bahamas in two days if it had to," he said of the 74-footer, which holds 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Frederiksen said 30 to 35 boats in the Mid-Atlantic will be Vikings, a startling feat considering their cheapest model, a 45-footer, begins at around $800,000. All of Viking's yachts, even the $3.4 million, 74-foot yacht, are made at their 550,000-square foot facility on the Bass River in New Gretna. Every Viking boat is custom made for each owner, who if they wanted to, could forego life on land for the rest of their lives, comfortably.
And yet even though he may never be able to afford one of his company's boats, Frederiksen said the sport of fishing transcends economic and social status. "You can spend millions on a boat or you can rent a rowboat for $20 and still catch fish," he said. "It's not like running, where your knees eventually give out on you - no matter how old you are, there's always a fish out there for you." That notion - that there is always a fish waiting for you - is what propels men to commit countless hours and money to find them.
It will never be easy, however, because the fish have made a similar commitment. "These fish have made the commitment to live," said Graves, who has dived with billfish in Mexico. "To them, it's not a sport. They don't know they might be released. Every fight is a matter of life and death."
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