![]() Under its cold waters, giant bluefin tuna schooled at the turbulent waters where two prevailing currents collided. The trio headed back to port, Gifford and the mate pulling the boat’s oars with bleeding hands and aching backs.ĭuring an era when commercial fishing and adventure‑seeking tourism started to boom and converge, bluefin tuna transformed Wedgeport’s fortunes. Within another hour, Lerner had landed this fish too, also more than 300 pounds, before they called it a day. ![]() No sooner had Gifford baited and cast the next hook than another tuna, this one even larger, was on the line. The fish, already close to death, flapped its fins with exhaustion, yet it still took every sickled gaff and ounce of strength the three men had to pull its bulk over the dory’s gunwale. With a final, deep tug, Lerner pulled the bluefin’s gleaming, torpedo‑shaped body alongside the boat, one smooth side of shimmering skin tipped toward the sky.Ī golf‑ball‑sized eye gleamed in its blue‑black head, as its sharp pectoral fin slapped the air fruitlessly. When Ernest Hemingway, a fishing friend of Lerner’s, first saw a big tuna off the coast of Spain, he was shocked at how the giant fish leapt clear of the water, falling back against it “with a noise like horses jumping off a dock.” Anyone capable and canny enough to catch a fish that size, Hemingway wrote with awe, could “enter unabashed into the presence of the very elder gods.”Īfter being dragged around the ocean for nearly half an hour, Lerner started to tire. Anyone capable and canny enough to catch a fish that size, Hemingway wrote with awe, could “enter unabashed into the presence of the very elder gods.”īut this wasn’t a gentle tease from the ocean’s depths. He knew it would be something like this, the world crystallized around his human body in a single second: water, wind, and sun man and fish. Lerner fought to keep line on the reel without breaking the tenuous connection. Even still, the fish towed the wooden dory across the glittering chop. The metal mechanism of Lerner’s reel screamed as it spun, letting out line faster than his eyes could follow. The fish’s pectoral fins slotted into its sides as it strained against Lerner’s rod, its skin flashing a rainbow of colors in agitation. That power fed its warm organs and dense red blood, its thick muscles throbbing with lactic acid as it pulled and ran. Like a speeding car, it ramped up its speed, drawing on the digested caloric power of all the tiny fish it had eaten that week on the marine bank locals had dubbed Soldier’s Rip, a bountiful patch of ocean about fifteen kilometers or so offshore from the village. And as of that day in Wedgeport, it had never been done before.ĭeep underwater, the hooked bluefin followed instinct, kicking its powerful sickled tail as it rocketed away from the dory. ![]() That line threaded through a rod held by Lerner, who had been strapped to a boat‑mounted swiveling chair that prevented him from being pulled headfirst into the ocean.Ĭatching a bluefin tuna on rod and reel required the skill, strength, and endurance of a world‑class fisherman, and every piece of gear had to work-from the bamboo rod to its arched metal hook. The physics of Lerner’s fight with the giant Atlantic bluefin tuna were simple: the tuna was three hundred pounds of muscle hooked to a line made of fifty-four braided strands of spun linen. ![]() Finally the rod twanged with the hit it was a brutal, fast snatch. Michael Lerner, a 44‑year‑old heir to a New York City clothing‑store fortune, sat near the boat’s bow, gazing at the ocean, as his guides Tommy Gifford and Lansdell “Bounce” Anderson chapped their hands on the oars.įor hours already, their boat had bobbed fruitlessly without a single bite on Lerner’s bait. Over the blue‑steel waves off Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, in 1935, the sun rose slowly and then all at once, first overtaking the morning stars, then teasing pink on the clouds, before finally splitting the horizon in two.
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