Man Trip (8 page)

B
aja Bill fired up and headed the
Kakalina
out to deeper sea.

The engines hummed endlessly. It took ten minutes for my hands to stop shaking.

Sometime around noon, I was lounging in the fighting chair watching two dark seabirds skimming the water, looking for food. They
flew so smooth and perfect they almost put me to sleep.

Baja Bill got on his radio and called the skipper of another boat. I could hear him talking about where the fish action was that day.

Ledward came up to stand beside me. “Can you believe how close those birds can get to the water?”

“I wish I could fly like that. What are they called?”

“Wedge-tailed shearwater.
’U’au kani
is the Hawaiian name.”

“Hey,” Baja Bill called from the flying bridge. He pointed. “Look.”

About a half mile away, a swirling mass of birds circled the sea. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

Ledward gave Baja Bill a thumbs-up and hung on to the fighting chair as Bill swung the boat around to head toward the swirling black specks. “Birds like that mean fish.”

Within minutes, we were cruising through them. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever
seen. Birds everywhere, like a cloud of them. And we were right in the middle of it.

“Talk about a feeding frenzy,” Ledward said. “These birds are called noio. They don’t skim like your shearwater. These ones dive-bomb.”

Boy, did they. From high above, they plunged down into the sea, snatching small fish out of the ocean.

A fish the size of a pocketknife landed on the deck. Then another, and another. “Flying fish,” Ledward said, tossing them back into the water. “They’re being scared up by bigger fish down below.”

We trolled back and forth through the birds, the lures jumping and plunging behind the boat.

Birds swirled around the wake, and—

Bang!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

A reel screamed! The rod bent forward, way more than when the ono had hit. It was an outside rod, starboard side, and it looked like it was about to snap in half.

I jumped out of the fighting chair and scrambled into the cabin to get out of the way.

Baja Bill brought the engines down and Ledward leaped for the jumping rod. Behind the boat, a monster fish burst out of the water, twisting and shaking and turning the water white. It was loosely hooked at the jaw. The lure flopped against its head.

The long bill told me it was a marlin.

“Yai!”
I yelped.

The marlin fell back into the ocean with a
whoomp
of exploding water and vanished. Ledward struggled to pull the rod out of its
holder. The engines grumbled as the boat rocked.

Baja Bill slid down the ladder from the flying bridge.

Ledward flipped off the clicker on the screaming reel. The reel went silent as line spun out into the water. It was so exciting it was spooky.

The marlin leaped again!

It twisted and shook its head, trying to shake the hook loose. It fell back into the ocean, turned, and rushed toward the boat, thrashing through the water, half in, half out.

“He’s coming at us!” Ledward shouted.

Ledward started reeling in the slack line as fast as he could as the marlin charged.

Baja Bill flew up the ladder to the flying bridge and lunged toward the controls.

I froze. Stopped breathing.

The marlin went under, then leaped again, completely out of the water and so close I could look it in the eye.

The engines roared to life. The boat jumped
ahead as the bow rose up out of the water.

The marlin charged under the boat, taking the line with it.

Ledward hung on to the reel with one hand and the fighting chair with the other.

The boat swerved as Bill tried to get out in front of the fish again.

Just then Ledward fell back.

The line went limp.

“Dang!” Baja Bill yelled from the bridge. “Dang, dang, dang!”

That big fish was gone.

“What happened?” I asked, gulping air.

Ledward wiped sweat from his neck. “Prop cut the line.”

Baja Bill brought the boat down to a crawl.

No one spoke.

I gaped at the ocean where the giant fish had been, the surface now a small smooth whirlpool. Looking over the gunnel into the depths, I saw spears of sunlight shooting down toward the bottom of the deep, deep sea. The color was a blue I’d never seen before.

It scared me.

The boat rocked, idling.

The swirling mass of birds moved on, now a quarter mile away.

“Too bad,” Ledward said. “He was a nice one. What you think he weighed, Bill?”

“Two-fifty. About.”

Ledward nodded and looked at me. “How you doing?”

“Uh … okay … I think.”

Baja Bill grunted. “Hang on to your hat, kid, because I’m not done here. No, sir, I am surely not done with this.”

B
aja Bill went to work.

He was so excited that now even
his
hands were shaking. He squatted down and dug through a box in the hold. He found what he was looking for and sat back on his heels.

He held it up. “This will get her.”

It was another lure. This one was black as
night. Points of light, like stars, sparkled in its huge head. It had rubber hanging on it like a hula skirt, with a giant steel hook poking through.

I stepped closer, gaping at the monster lure. It was creepy.

“Secret weapon,” he said. “My trusty old Black Mariah.”

Baja Bill grinned. “Here, see this? Only one hook. If you use two, they could pin its jaws shut. If the fish gets off the line, you don’t want to take the chance of killing it.”

The steel hook looked strong enough to pull Ledward’s jeep.

Ledward put his hand on my shoulder. “This is where Baja Bill turns into Captain Ahab.”

“Who’s Captain Ahab?”

“Guy on a mission. He’s from a great book called
Moby-Dick
.”

“Cool.” For sure I was going to read it. Maybe Mr. Tanaka had it in the school library.

Baja Bill tied a new double line to a new swivel and secured it to the big black lure.
“The swivel keeps the line from getting all wound up,” he said. “That old fish can jump and turn all he wants, no problem.”

This time the leader wasn’t wire but extra-thick fishing line.

“Kick her into gear, would ya, Led?”

Ledward went up to the bridge and moved the throttle forward.

As the boat came up to speed, Baja Bill dropped the Mariah overboard and released the drag on the reel. When the lure was far behind the boat, he stopped the running line and tugged a few inches more off the reel until the lure was exactly where he wanted it.

“The way that fish was jumping around, my guess is he was showing off for some female, and with marlin, it’s the female that gets big, not the male. We’re going after his girlfriend, boy.”

“That one wasn’t big?”

“There’s bigger ones.”

I glanced up at Ledward. He gave me a grin and a thumbs-up.

“Can you see the lure I just put out?” Baja Bill asked.

“I think so. By the third wave in the wake?”

Baja Bill clapped my back. “Good eyes. You’re catching on.”

The new lure plunged, smoked, and wiggled. If any lure was going to grab a marlin’s attention, it would be that one.

“We’re coming to find you, Big Mama,” Baja Bill said to the sea.

The engines thrummed as we circled back toward the birds. Ocean water hissed out from under the hull.

Baja Bill looked up at Ledward. “Let’s trade places. If we get another hit, we need you down here. I’m feeling lucky. I’m thinking big.”

Ledward set the wheel on autopilot and climbed down as Baja Bill went up.

Ledward stood watching the lures with his
knees braced up against the stern gunnel. I sat in the chair, ready to jump out if anything happened.

Deep-sea fishing was something else! It grabbed you and took you away. When it was boring and nothing was happening, you sat there thinking about what
could
happen. And then when something did happen, your mind was on the fish and nothing else in the whole entire universe. Nothing.

I was hooked. Just like a fish.

I couldn’t wait to tell my friends about it. Mom and Darci, too.

I watched the Black Mariah work behind the boat. Baja Bill set four other lines out, too, all of them plunging and leaving smoky trails of bubbles in the wake.

We ran through the birds again. Flying fish thumped onto the deck.

I thought I saw something in the water and stretched to look harder. There was a huge dark shadow in the wake. “Ledward!”
I said, stumbling out of the fighting chair. “Look!”