By Roddy Hays

Author's Note: This tale is as topical today as it was then - a story about big fish in a faraway place that could easily produce a 2000-pound fish one day.

The day unfolds with no hint of what is to come. Jason has a day off so it's just me and Olaf and the same three anglers as yesterday. We head for GOD'S WILL at 9:00 to fuel up, and the guys catch some black jacks from under the boat as we do so. We head offshore at 9:30 and have barely finished putting the spread out at 9:50 when the left long goes down and a 25-pound wahoo comes into the boat with a St. Thomas Prowler in its mouth. Jay is the angler and has achieved one of his Ascension goals. He is very happy, and so am I……….I love wahoo !! The weather is very pleasant with a little 3 foot chop. Lots of flying fish. We head steadily SW to the plateau.

11:35 and we are outside the drop-off, working several acres of breezing skipjack. It's the most bait I've seen so far and so we all get fairly excited. Jody has gone home as it's Trevor Cockle's turn to be back on the bridge of GOD'S FAVOUR, and he comes past, catches a live-bait or two and slowly slips behind as we accompany the skippies as they head westwards at a fair pace. Mathias is inside, heading eastwards towards his sea-mount.

We turn around and head eastwards too at 12:15. It's a long tack, but we know where we want to go, and fate has hold of the bow too, as we are to find out……..Trevor becomes a speck on the horizon as we catch up with Mathias, our straight line making up for his sensible small tacks. On his travels he raises a marlin but it does not stay attached.

Trevor becomes unreachable on the VHF, and as the day passes he goes 1 for 2, the caught animal another fish of 500 or so. When we reach the seamount there is nothing to suggest we should remain, no birds or bait, and so I decide to wander inwards so we can work the eastern edge of the SW plateau, which is the up-current side.

There is little sign of life anywhere, and so I am somewhat in auto-mode when at 1:15 there is a strangled shout from Olaf in the cockpit……..he's so excited he can't quite get the words out…….and then he does, " LONG RIGHT…….LONG RIGHT, BIG FISH" and at that I turn around, expecting a 500-pound fish to be out there and instead there's a Madeiran sized marlin hanging behind the Enki. It's a real fish, one side or the other of 1000lbs, and she has a nasty bright blue tail and nasty bright blue fins. Blast…….I know we won't get the simple bite out of this one…………she's fat as a pig too………but I get excited too !!

The fish follows, and then comes into the Enki at bite-speed and just as I think we ARE going to get the easy bite, she closes over the bait, the line comes tight to the clip without opening it and then the fish is gone, leaving us all on the verge, and the Enki still burbling along happily on the long right.. The fish reappears in the wake, hanging behind everything and even as Olaf asks should he pull the lure out the clip and tease the fish she fades away, turning astern and the swimming rapidly into the distance. I turn the boat hard over and round to where the fish is headed and we work the area for several minutes. Nothing, she's gone. The encounter has been brief, and I doubt if a really great crew would have had much time to do anything else. Blast, blast, blast.

We work the area for real now, not only hoping to raise the fish again, but also to raise another fish if that is where they are. I concentrate hard, tacking religiously and working the un-lined area on the GPS until every inch of the drop is covered.

At 2:15 we pass through a pod of dolphins and so when Olaf brings me a fresh water bottle at 2:25 and then says he's seen a large shadow deep down behind the left rigger I suggest it might be a dolphin when it does not reappear. We wander along for another 30 seconds and then suddenly there is a beast of a fish, bigger than the first, on the swell behind the small sailfish bait.

HOLY MOSES……..there is no time for Olaf to get back down below, so I lean over the rail and shout down for the 30lb outfit to be got out the water. No one appears and Olaf joins in, bellowing the same. Jay and Roger appear but can't grasp what we're saying, so Olaf bundles down the tower as best as he can, and looking astern, I see the fish closing in on the little bait. I'm still yelling, praying that someone down there is going to get the lure out the water when finally the fish swims straight up to the bait, sticks a bill, then a mouth, a huge head and then all her shoulders out the water and engulfs the lure in a monstrous bite which brings memories flooding back.

This is a really serious fish, maybe 1200 pounds and as I watch the splash subside, the little rod seems to sigh apologetically and slowly bends astern as the TLD starts to sing. The line is clear, there is only 15 feet of 200lb leader on the end of it and the hooks are tiny. Not good. Four lures come into the boat at warp speed as I wait expectantly with the throttles and I can see two huge splashes off to port as the fish plunges through two swells.

Sean has the reel almost in freespool, but this little outfit has been used for tuna chunking and live-bait catching - no preparation for an encounter with the leviathan attached presently, and at that moment the line pops, even as I start to turn the boat. Sean says loudly that the fish is gone, but we still go through the procedures, run the clear line down as best as I can, too well even as I nearly put it in the props (it's impossible to see) but eventually Sean is winding in a long length of limp line, the break somewhere down close to the double…………TRIPLE DOUBLE-DECKER BLAST……DAMN, DAMN, damn.

The 30-pound rod is put to rest, recriminations start down below, but that's fishing. Olaf is banging his head on the deck, cursing loudly and explicitly with huge Teutonic oaths, and we put the lures back out and get back to work. Hmm, where's a 600-pound fish when you want one ?

3:15 and I get excited when a shadow passes the boat high in a swell, but it's only a small manta ray. Small pods of skippies are appearing here and there. Mathias catches a couple and live-baits. Trevor is back in the area too…………….we're all hungry for another fish.

We drift slowly southwestwards along the edge, make a circle around a slow Mathias at the end of the edge and head back……………..4:00, and the inevitable happens. I'm watching the wake and see a monstrous brown shadow swimming determinedly up behind the short rigger on the left. The lure is now an Andromeda, it's working beautifully, and this time I know we're going to get a bite. This fish, unbelievably, is even bigger than our earlier visitors, and I instinctively know it's one of the biggest fish I have ever seen.

This is what I came to Ascension for, to see a fish which might make the 1400-pound mark. In an unreal dream-like sequence, the fish piles in on the Andromeda, bill out, dorsal up, a back as broad as a pregnant brown cow behind it all, and just at the moment when I think it's all going like clockwork, she slows, sinks, fades away and then looking astern I see her sliding past the Enki on the long right and thence downsea into the sun, and as the light that direction is so bad I just KNOW that being able to see the fish in that light means she was a monster………………..the best crew in the world would only have had time to get a pitch-bait out the tube and maybe over the side, the encounter lasting all of ten seconds.

There is a stunned silence on the boat, and then much, much loud conversation. Up in the tower, I ponder the fact that we've seen three huge fish in the space of four hours or so, and one of them no more than 100 yards away from a live-bait, and both of the other boats have been playing with slightly smaller fish. Is HARMATTAN a fickle boat, or what ?

I contemplate the fact we have had two identical bites too, and speculate that maybe the boat is providing a curious buzz that big fish like to examine but not eat. We theorise all the rest of the afternoon : have new fish come in ? Where have all the sails gone ? Where have the small 200-pound rats from the previous three weeks gone ? Is everything going to change ? Hmm………

Mathias catches a 300-pound fish at 5:00 which makes me ponder more. We head for home at the normal time and even though we have not caught a fish, it's still been one of the most amazing day's fishing in my life.

I have seen what I wanted to see in Ascension, and I agree whole-heartedly with all those who have said that the next world record might come from these waters. It's almost inevitable……..trust me !! What a day………….