Marlin Fishing

A Blue Marlin

One of the guys he knew from his T- Boat days was Wild Bill Holden who was also a COB (Chief of the Boat) on one or the other of the T- Boats before he retired. 

Bill had a 35 ft. fishing boat and they went fishing several times for Marlin out in the Gulfstream.

And one day they caught a Blue, Chuck said, “It was a real beauty.” They wrestled it for well over an hour, I don’t remember who it was working the reel at the time they got it right up to the boat.

A White Marlin

I think it was Chuck that leaned over the side to gaff the Marlin; he missed the Marlin, the gaff hit the side of the boat with a loud noise, the Marlin went berserk and snapped the line. 

Everyone on the boat was so disappointed. They fished awhile longer and got no more strikes and called it a day. 

A few days later they went out again and this time boated a White Marlin.

Bill and another guy on the Boat, Les Ettinger would go out diving on his boat once in awhile to the 12 Mile Reef. It was a great place to snorkel because it was quite shallow in many places.

One day they went out diving, Les was already overboard. Bill was still on the boat, and Bill said, “Suddenly Les broke the surface and looked as though he was crawling really fast on top of the water.”

When he got back on the boat Bill asked him, “What's wrong, what happened?” Les could only say, “Eye, big eye!” So Bill got overboard then and swam over to where Les has surfaced and dove down. 

There he found backed up in a deep crevice of the Coral on the deeper side of the reef a huge Tuna, it was sleeping, but its eyes were open.

 Tuna

Bill said, “Its eye was as big as a dinner plate.” When he went back to the boat and told Les what it was, Les said, “I don’t care; anything with an eye that big is scary as hell when you come up on it suddenly.”  And of coarse this became a sea story.

We had a cat named Priss, one day when Chuck was giving her a bath in the tub; she reached up to grab hold and one of her claws hooked him under the left eye. It didn't really hurt, but it bled under the skin and gave him a beautiful shiner!

When he went in to the Boat he got teased by all the guys that maybe I had blacked his eye, he told them the cat had done it, but none of them believed him. On the weekend Les came over to the house to visit for awhile.

As he was about to leave he asked Chuck again, “C B how did you say you got that shiner?” Chuck answered, “Dammit Les I told you the cat did it.”

Les looked at me with a question in is eye and I couldn't resist. I rubbed my nails on my shoulder, then blew on them and said, “Meet the cat.” Les laughed and said to Chuck, “I knew all the time that Annette did it.” He told the conversation to everyone on the Boat and Chuck never lived it down.