Bluefin Summer

With our daily limit iced down, I manned the bow while McMurray steered us into another school and phoned his young wife, Danielle, a gourmet chef, instructing her to relay recipes for tuna rolls and sushi to my wife, Donna. I missed four strikes before I hooked up. With the 12-weight I had the fish, a clone of our first, to the boat in 30 minutes. It seemed in good shape, and McMurray held it high by the tail and dropped it into the water, giving it a jump-start and a quick charge of oxygen. That fish taught us that you need the thickest of hooks. The seemingly stout one on the Albie Whore was badly bent.

More boats appeared, but we still had fish to ourselves, and with the quiet four-stroke we could cruise into the middle of them without putting any down. I have always envied the willpower that, in these situations, allows McMurray to rack his rod and pick up his camera. And I envy his results. When he resumed casting a bluefin provided a particularly painful lesson, especially for McMurray--i.e., that improved clinch knots tied (at least by me) on 25-pound flurocarbon come unwrapped. Use a loop knot.

After each of us had landed another fish, we were no longer intimidated. You just have to accept the fact that you will always lose 200 yards of backing in the first 15 seconds.

As we moved east we encountered larger schools and fewer boats. "God, look at that blitz," yelled McMurray, spinning the wheel and swatting the throttle. I pooh-poohed him when he suggested trying the little crease flies we use for albies in low light. But tuna devoured them on their way down from arcing vaults.

At 5:00, with 11 fish to the boat, McMurray inquired if I thought we should "call it a day."

"Are you crazy?" I demanded. "You and I may never live to see this again." But the action faded with the light, and we were driven off the water by darkness. We filleted our fish in my barn and saved every scrap. Donna had the sushi and tuna rolls ready by 11:00--by far the best we'd ever had. The stuff you order at restaurants is flash-frozen, the better to kill parasites (virtually non-existent in small bluefins); and the minimum commercial limit is 72 inches.

"To hell with any assignment that doesn't float," I told McMurray. "I'm on these fish twice a week till they leave. So how about Thursday?" It was the easiest sell I ever made. But Richard Reagan had an important commitment that day and needed McMurray to fill in at the office.

So there I was at 5:30 am on August 11, 2005, alone on a fog-shrouded Rhode Island Sound, listening for birds and fish, eyes glued to the GPS. Finally, I made out whitewater close by my starboard beam and promptly hooked and landed a fine fish. I steamed due south, searching for an opening. Then halfway to Block Island, I passed abruptly into bright sunlight and glassy water broken in a dozen spots by schools of bunker-gorging bluefins. I saw storm petrels dancing on the water and small tunoids racing west--almost certainly green bonito.

"Hey Ted," came a clear voice on the radio. "Are you in fog?" It was Capt. Amanda Switzer, the famous Montauk guide and movie star (at least on the ESPN series "Guide House").

"Only figuratively," I replied. "Head straight for Block." And in 10 minutes her white Parker broke into the sunlight like the slow-motion TV ad footage of the passenger jet nosing out of the cloud layer. In the bow, wearing his trademark orange fleece and flailing his right arm like the drowned Ahab, was Richard Reagan. "Haar, Teddy," he called. "I seek the bluefin tuna." At noon Amanda radioed to tell me he'd blown up a rod.