It started in 1957, when my older son Bob and brother Dave's son Dave were both 16. We embarked (literally) on a new kind of adventure that set a precedent for many years of marine excursions. Dave, an attorney with a Florida insurance company, arranged for us to charter a twenty-six foot cabin cruiser out of Miami for two weeks of fishing in the Gulf Stream.

We were completely ignorant of operating anything more than an outboard motorboat, but we fooled the charter people into letting us take the boat anyway (after signing our lives away). We cruised up the coast to West Palm Beach, found a dock where we could tie up at night, and spent the days trolling the ocean on our own. The deep blue stream flows northward a few miles off the coast, and is populated by all kinds of ocean fish. We had a wonderful time catching speedy dolphin, flashing iridescent green and yellow, bonito (small tuna), high jumping king mackerel, barracuda, and amberjacks, periodically losing part or all of a big fish to a shark. We rarely went swimming, although nephew Dave daringly dived off the stern to untangle a line from the propeller.

At night, we put a lantern at the outer end of the dock and bait fished for whatever would bite. The boys had gone swimming the first day, but after the first night of fishing, when we caught horrible looking moray eels and long-toothed cutlass fish, swimming became less popular!

We learned two secrets that were a great help in catching dorado, the delicious hard-fighting fish that roams all of the tropical seas. First, schools of them love to seek the shade under patches of seaweed that line the edge of the Gulf Stream, or even stray boxes or boards. Second - if one dorado is hooked, the rest of the school follows it, and all can be caught if each is kept in the water until the next is hooked. Is this fatal habit merely curiosity or a protective instinct?

Fortunately for us inexperienced landlubbers, with our puny fishing tackle, none of the really big game ate our lures.

The excitement of this adventure has led us to many further adventures in cruising and in big game fishing all over the oceans of the world.

Meanwhile, we had left our wives and children at Dave's home in Orlando, and they too had wild tales to tell, of an alligator that pursued the children while they were swimming in a lake; of a terrifying night prowler that Marie chased with a bullwhip, while the panicked children hid under beds, and so on.

Dave senior, who had lived in Florida for several years, told me some outlandish stories that he swore were true. He had found some fresh pelican eggs and decided to fry and eat them. Dave would do something like that! To his surprise, the yolks turned bright red, the whites turned blue. They tasted fishy. Dave claims that he gave some eggs to a neighbor lady who wanted to discourage her husband from coming home drunk at night. She cooked him a meal of pelican eggs. That's all I know. If you don't believe the story, you could check it out!

I enjoy all kinds of fishing -from fly fishing for bluegills, trout and salmon, bass fishing in streams, to catching walleyed pike and fierce northern pike in Canada with my sons, grandsons, and friends. My favorite sport, however, is pursuing the powerful and spectacular speedsters of the ocean: marlin, sailfish, king mackerel and dolphin (dorado, mahi mahi - not porpoise). I've fished for them in many of the southern seas: in the Golf Stream off Florida and the Keys, at Cancun and the island of Cozumel off the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, and off Mazatlan on the West Coast. I've tried to catch giant marlin off the Kona Coast of Hawaii, and unsuccessfully tried to charter a boat at Cairns, Australia to fish on the Great Barrier Reef. Our cruise ship, Royal Odyssey, didn't stop long enough.

One of the exciting things about these fish is that they often swim at the surface of the ocean, searching for their prey - flying fish for example - with their dorsal fins visible above the surface. A favorite way of hunting them is to rapidly troll several lures skipping along the surface. If a sail or a bill or a fin can be seen, the captain tries to cross the path of the fish. This is not always easy, because these speedsters travel at rates from ten to forty miles per hour.

When hooked, these ocean gamefish tear line off the reel at terrific speed, and are literally unstoppable for hundreds of yards. Then they erupt in a series of spectacular leaps, and continue the fight for a half-hour to several hours. The fisherman must exert maximum effort all the time or the fish never tires. Etiquette requires that the fisherman cannot be relieved by anyone else.

But even these things are not the most fascinating to the initiated fisherman, and many people who go out on charter boats never become aware of it. You may have noticed that the mate always hooks the sailfish or marlin, then hands the rod to the fisherman. Of course, the professional crew wants to make sure that the fish is not lost, when only one or two are seen in an expensive day's fishing.

All fisherman are conditioned to jerk the rod as soon as they see or feel a strike, but this is usually a sure way to lose a sailfish. Unlike most other fish, these billfish use their bony bills to kill their prey. They swim through a school of small fish, sweeping the bill rapidly back and forth to cut or stun them, and only then do they circle back and swallow the dead prey. This means that the novice or excitable fisherman reacts too soon, and the sailfish is gone!
The experienced mate, or in some cases, the fisherman who has gained the confidence of the captain, does the following: the instant the billfish hits the lure, he frees the line so the lure lies still in the water to imitate a dead fish. If possible, he or the captain from his elevated perch watches until the sailfish has circled and swallowed the lure, or alternatively he counts off at least ten seconds. Then he strikes as hard as he can, to imbed the hook in the bony mouth.

I learned a further refinement from a barefoot Mexican captain. Since the sailfish turns the small fish in its mouth so as to swallow it headfirst, his technique is to strike gently the first time, then strike hard. "This helps the fish to turn the bait."

Once I had learned the art, I found it an added thrill to hook my own billfish. The first time I did it, the line wore a deep groove in my thumb as the big fish sped away before I could throw the lever of the reel. The Mexican mate made an approving comment (I think) because I at least had prevented a backlash and a broken line as the marlin took off.

This know-how has since paid off a few times, when the mate was busy or incompetent. A case in point: A few years ago, my brother Dave and I chartered the COMIN' HOME, a sportsfisher captained and owned by Joe Herzog. We were joined by a couple who were professional salmon fisherman from Michigan. As we were peacefully trolling the four lures, four sailfish struck all at once, like torpedoes! Panic ensued. The mate tangled the broke one line. Three sailfish disappeared. I had remembered my lessons, and after the furor died down, everyone was surprised to see me fighting a fish.

About noon, the salmon fisherman hooked seven foot shark with his light (twenty-pound test) line, and spent the rest of the day catching it. Dave was hopping mad at losing all that expensive fishing time.

In the interest of conservation, sailfish are generally released. The boat flies a special flag coming back to port. In Miami, they have annual tournaments, in which fishermen releasing the most fish win very high prizes. The rules say that if the mate can seize the bill and cut the leader this counts as a legal release. However, some cheating evidently goes on, because the veteran skippers in the Keys always say, "whenever a sail is lost for any reason, "That's a Miami release!"

When Herzog was cleaning fish at the dock, he was watched by some put pelicans. One time he leaped in the air, yelling, "that - bit my --!"

One day, fishing off Whale Harbor on COMIN' HOME, I was lucky enough to catch two sails. The mate put plastic tags in their shoulders. These tags are provided by Fish and Wildlife service, and tell where, and when, and by whom the fish were caught, along with a mailing address. Two months later, I received a letter saying that one of the fish, which I had caught on the Atlantic coast of the Florida Keys, had been caught again off New Orleans! It had been caught by a Japanese commercial fishing boat, and was not released again! The Wildlife department also sent me an interesting bookley, with charts showing migration paths of sailfish and other migratory species.

Another memorable day occurred one March off the Mexican island of Cozumel, where my brother Dave and his wife Marie were vacationing with Ruth and me. We went fishing in a twenty-four foot boat with a barefoot captain and mate. We caught five sails, two bull dolphins weighing over fifty pounds each, and a six foot shark. We could have had another shark that was following the boat, but were too exhausted. The one shark we did catch kept us all skipping around the small deck while he thrashed around with snapping teeth. Little Marie's sailfish was her first. Dave and the crew were anxiously helping her, and didn't even know that I had another sail at the same time. I'd maneuvered up to the bow to be out of the way.

The big dolphin had amazing speed and power. On the way back to El Presidente hotel, he told the captain that was the best day of fishing we had ever had. He replied that we should come back in May, when the fishing is really good!

Out in the South Pacific, giant black marlin roam the deep. Weighing up to twelve or thirteen hundred pounds, they dwarf the blue, striped and white varieties of the American coasts. These are real kings of the game fish world. My only day of pursuing these leviathans occurred when Ruth and I were vacationing on the Kona coast of Hawaii. I went out in a chartered twenty-six foot boat, with only the captain and me. The main difference over the familiar sports fisherman was the size of the reels (about eight inches diameter), the size of the line (over a hundred pounds test) and the bait. We started by catching bonito (small tuna) twelve to fifteen pounds in weight, and trolled them live at about ten miles per hour.

Cruising past the magnificent scenery was worth the money in itself. High cliffs of fresh black lava alternated with groves of palms and tropical trees. We passed the Haven of Refuge, where in days past any Hawaiian who had violated a taboo, for example by stepping in the King's shadow and was fast enough to outrun the avengers, could be safe.

Fortunately, we didn't hook a marlin (can you imagine a fat sixty year old trying to bring in a half ton fighting machine half as long as the boat?) But two of our bonito were decapitated by something large and speedy! And we caught a fish called Wahoo.