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Having put at least
30 tuna weighing up to about 150 pounds into his RIB since that first
fish, Picone was fairly confident in his fish-fighting system when he
headed to Hudson Canyon last September for an overnight excursion to the
canyon’s east wall. “We fished about a third of the way down
[the wall],” he says, adding that there’s a little “notch”
where the canyon drops from 400 feet to around 1,000 feet. His crew fished
six lines off the Viking, which was tied to a lobster pot, while he and
his current mate Mike Morash sat tethered off, fishing two of their own
lines on the RIB. (Picone doesn’t fish the Viking much—he leaves
that to the crew.) It was dinnertime, and Picone and Morash were heading
back to the boat for burgers when one of the lines on the Viking started
screaming and just as fast came to a halt. A few seconds later the 70-pound-class
reel on Little Edge started tearing line with the speed of a bullet train.
Dinner was on hold. “I thought we had a bigeye,” Picone remembers.
Soon after the battle started, the unknown foe darted towards a nearby
lobster pot, and Picone thought for sure the battle would be over, his
reel’s modest 60-pound mono no match for the pot’s anchor line.
“For some reason, the fish came out of the pot,” Picone says
quizzically. The pitched battle raged near the pot and the Viking for
a half hour before Picone was able to move the fight into uncluttered
water. Once clear Picone, Morash, and Little Edge took off into
the pitch black, being towed by the still-unknown fish.
Shortly thereafter they
got their first glimpse of the enemy as it rose from the depths. “We
saw a huge fin and torso, and it came at the boat,” Picone says excitedly,
adding, “It took a shot at the RIB! It was the first time we knew
we had a swordfish.” For more than two and a half hours, angler and
swordfish jabbed, crossed, and hooked each other until both were as spent
as two heavyweights in the 15th round. Determined not to lose, Picone
pulled strength from his body’s reserve tank and cranked down on
the fish. “The swordfish came up boat-side and was pulling slowly,”
he recalls, adding, “I assumed it was tired.” Now two and a
half miles from his mothership and with only that small gaff onboard,
Picone says Morash asked him, “Do you think if we put a gaff in that
thing, it’s going to kill us?” (Sounds like a valid question
to me.) The two anglers decided to roll the dice and stuck the fish with
the gaff. “It [the fish] didn’t do anything,” Picone says,
sounding relieved. “I then put my head underwater and wrapped two
safety lines around its tail and attached them to the RIB.” The two
anglers added two more safety lines to the sword’s bill, and then
they removed the gaff from the fish’s back and put it into its mouth
as they towed the fish back through the night to the lights of their mothership.
The victorious but battle-worn
and weary duo made it back to their big boat and transferred the behemoth
billfish onboard. Picone and Morash stepped off Little Edge and
onto the rock-solid cockpit of the Viking, and some of the crew remarked
that it looked like the sword didn’t go quite as quietly as originally
thought. Picone and his mate turned to discover the RIB’s starboard
pontoon had been skewered and was steadily deflating. (After all, what’s
a great fish story without a close call?)
I guess it’s good
that ol’ billfish didn’t tow them three miles.
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