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Updated: May 14, 2025
But he had been there long enough to get my bait. Just then Sam pointed. I saw a sailfish break water a hundred yards away. "Look at him yump!" repeated Sam, every time the fish came out, which, to be exact, was five times. "We'll go over and pick him up," I said. Sam and I always argue a little about the exact spot where a fish has broken water.
It happened, however, to be a beautiful cero mackerel, one of the shapeliest and most attractive fish in these waters. He is built something like the brook-trout, except for a much sharper head and wider fins and tail. But he is speckled very much after the manner of the trout. We trolled on, and all of a sudden raised a school of sailfish. They came up with a splashing rush very thrilling to see.
We circled around them to drive them down. I saw a big wave back of R. C.'s bait and I yelled, "Look out!" I felt something hit my bait and then hit it again. I knew it was a sailfish rapping at it. I let the line slip off the reel. Just then R. C. had a vicious strike and when he hooked the fish the line snapped. He claimed that he had jerked too hard.
He measured seven feet one inch. But we measured his quality by his leaps and nineteen gave him the record for us so far. We stowed him up in the bow and got under way again, and scarcely had I let my bait far enough astern when a sailfish hit it. In fact, he rushed it. Quick as I was, which was as quick as a flash, I was not quick enough for that fish. He felt the hook and he went away.
Suddenly the sailfish took it fiercely. I let him run a long way before I struck at him, and then I called to the boatman to throw out the clutch. When the boat is moving there is a better chance of a tight line while striking, and that is imperative if an angler expects to hook the majority of these illusive sailfish.
He came up beautifully, throwing the spray, glinting in the sun, an angry fish with sail spread and his fins going. Then on the boat was the same old thrilling bustle and excitement and hilarity I knew so well and which always pleased me so much. This sailfish was a jumper. "Look at him yump!" exclaimed Sam, with as much glee as if he had not seen it before. The cameras got busy.
The SAILFISH has covered many thousands of miles in operations in those waters. She has sunk a Japanese destroyer. She has torpedoed a Japanese cruiser. She has made torpedo hits two of them on a Japanese aircraft carrier. Three of the enlisted men of our Navy who went down with the SQUALUS in 1939 and were rescued, are today serving on the same ship, the U.S.S. SAILFISH, in this war.
Six hours later he weighed fifty-eight and a half pounds, and as he had lost a good deal of blood and dried out considerably, he would have gone over sixty pounds, which, so far, is the largest sailfish I know of caught on light tackle. The sailfish were still leaping around us and we started off again. The captain called our attention to a tail and a sail a few yards apart not far from the boat.
Jump has performed the apparently impossible. Marlin swordfish hooked on light tackle can be handled by an exceedingly skilful angler. They make an indescribably spectacular, wonderful fight, on the surface all the time, and can be taken as quickly as on heavy tackle. Obviously, then, this becomes true of tarpon and sailfish and small tuna.
I failed to hook my fish. It was getting along pretty well into the afternoon by this time and the later it got the better the small fish and kingfish seemed to bite. I caught one barracuda and six kingfish, while R. C. was performing a somewhat similar feat. Then he got a smashing strike from a sailfish that went off on a hard, fast rush, so that he hooked it perfectly.
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