Hooked on St. Croix

Boat/US Magazine, Nov, 2001 by Becky Squires

To many anglers, the blue marlin is the sportfishing worlds King of the Beasts. Memorialized in Hemingways The Old Man and the Sea, the blue marlin is revered for its incredible strength and fighting spirit. It can often take hours to land one.

In the Western Hemisphere, the angling cognoscenti consider the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas the blue marlin epicenter of the world, especially during a full moon from July through September. Its a matter of geography: Just 20 miles north of St. Thomas lies the spectacular North Drop, a 600-foot-deep abyss bordered by craggy underwater cliffs and canyons. Huge schools of fish feed on the upwelling currents, from squid to flying fish. Following them are the ocean-roaming predators like dolphin, wahoo and tuna looking for a quick and plentiful meal. The blue marlin and its cousins, the white marlin, swordfish and sailfish, bring up the rear.

"Marlins are the top predators in the fish chain," says Boat U.S. National Advisory Council member Dean Clarke, who is also the executive editor of Sport Fishing and Marlin magazines. "While sharks are scavengers, preying on the weak, the sickly and the old, marlin go after whatever is in front of them," he said.

Since the largest blue marlin ever caught tipped the scales at more than 2,000 pounds, and most prize-winning marlin weigh between 600 and 1,300 pounds, their food could be just about anything that swims.

Interestingly, only the female marlin grows this big; the male rarely exceeds 200 pounds.

"Because marlin are so big, its a real challenge to land them," says Clarke. "There s no way a man can just outmuscle a 650-pound marlin who is fighting for its life in its own territory -- although that s the instinctive reaction of most men. Women are actually better at catching the really big fish than men -- they try to finesse it, instead of trying to over power it."

Bluewater big-game fishing for marlin and other billfish is not only a challenge for the angler, but also for the boat captain and crew. You don t just stop the boat, throw a line overboard and hope for the best.

Because of the distances to be covered and the marlin s speed -- some have been clocked as high as 60 miles per hour -- the boat is trolled, using its speed and motion to manipulate the lures and bait. Hairpin turns, sudden stops and backing down once the fish swallows the bait are a big part of billfish fishing. The better the captain is at maneuvering the boat, the more successful landing the fish will be.

During a recent trip to St. Thomas and St. Croix hosted by the Virgin Islands Department of Tourism, I got a chance to see big-game fishing from the catbird -- and captains -- seat. After three days, I was (pardon the pun) "hooked." If you love being on the water, enjoy the thrill of the chase as well as the catch, and don't mind the twists and turns of a 45-foot twin-engine fishing boat on eight-foot seas (hint: the Transderm Scop patch is a terrific help here), big-game fishing is fantastic.

Even though our boats had electronic fishfinders, Mother Nature always knew better. The sight of a frigate bird high in the sky circling a spot in the ocean was enough to send us crashing and bashing over the waves. Stray Sargasso weed was hailed with full-cry fish alerts, as we sped over to seek out any fish hiding in its "shade."

Best of all were the two styrofoam fish buoys that had somehow gotten loose hundreds of miles away and, in their travels, amassed their own little world of clinging algae, tiny reef critters, bigger bait fish and so on up the food chain. In five memorable moments over Lang Bank in St. Croix we brought up six wahoo, "the best-eating fish in the ocean," according to our captain, Bobby McCay.

Unless you already own a boat in the USVIs (more about this later) you ll need to charter, and boats are available for as little as half a day to as long as you want (or can afford).

"The crew is really more important than the boat -- you want one that has experience catching the kind of fish you re seeking," said Clarke, "This kind of fishing can be a dangerous pastime if you don t know what you re doing. People are killed every year trying to catch billfish: They get stabbed with the bill, or flipped over the side by the strength of the fish and pulled to the bottom. These fish are fighting for their lives. The potential danger is part of the inherent draw of bluewater big-game fishing," he said.

It never occurred to me that fishing could be considered "dangerous" -- although one of my fellow travelers who took his Dramamine too late would probably disagree. That's because I was in such good hands aboard Lady Carol in St. Thomas and McKay's boat, Leisure Lady, in St. Croix. We were a civilized charter-fishing group. We each took turns in the fighting chair, giving up our place to the next person once we'd landed a fish.

In the USVIs, unless the charter boat crew or you yourself are planning to take some fish home for dinner that night, the fish is usually released right away, sometimes after tagging it. In fact, blue marlin caught and tagged in the Virgin Islands have been caught again as far north as North Carolina, and as far east as Africa.