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Barta discovered a link
between bigeyes and the location of warm-core eddies feeding off the Gulf
Stream. An accomplished pilot (he owns a company that buys and sells corporate
jets), Barta would fly over offshore canyons and search for these eddies.
That’s right, no fancy sea-surface temperature charts, just his
eyes. He’d then fly home, get his crew, load up his boat, and go
for it. To date, Barta has caught 386 bigeye tuna. But who’s counting?
Actually, he is, and always will. Perhaps it’s the competitive spirit
he developed while a junior Olympian. In fact, in addition to his exploits
with the bigeyes, Barta has held more than 20 IGFA records.
But even Barta admits
that he regrets all the fish carcasses in his wake. Sports Illustrated
once called him “The Butcher of Shinnecock.” “I
was proud of that title at the time,” he says. “I’ve
killed a lot of fish, and I’ve also got the guts to say it was wrong.”
Make no mistake, he’s still going to keep tuna for the table. But
he’s also against calcuttas and kill tournaments and supports children’s
causes through a series of tournaments he runs. Barta’s tourneys
have raised more than $1 million for the IGFA junior angling program.
He recently turned his attention towards underprivileged children in North
Carolina. Last year he launched the Barta Boys & Girls Club Billfish
Tournament (www.bartaboysandgirlsclubbillfish.com),
in Beaufort, North Carolina, which works on honor-system scoring and is,
he says, all about “handshakes and backslaps. It’s called
sportfishing, not money fishing.” The 2004 event raised more than
$40,000 for the Boys & Girls Club, and with increased sponsorship
and participants, this worthy cause is sure to reap even bigger benefits
in 2005.
While Barta’s
an angler who’s caught most all of the fish on his to-do list and
is spending a lot of energy in his philanthropic efforts, there’s
always a new adventure looming on the horizon and another goal to achieve.
His latest, and one he’s thinking of filming for his TV show, is
a trip to Madeira with his famed bigeye-catching crew of the 1980’s
to chase down some of the largest-reported bigeye tuna around. I hear
this trip may soon come to fruition, so keep an eye out.
So, yeah, he’s
loud, and humility is not his forte. But Barta makes sportfishing interesting,
and his knowledge is based on decades of experience. Barta succeeds and
fails (he once dropped 40 striped marlin before hooking up and catching
his four-pound-class world record). He’ll loudly celebrate his successes
and readily admit his failures. And his reputation around these parts
is that if he finds fish, he has no problem calling you over to them.
Sounds pretty genuine to me.
Next
page > Part 1: Love him or hate him, Tred
Barta is one sportfishing personality who is what he says and says what
he means. > Page 1, 2
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