Early Labor
Day morning I went out
commercial fishing with Curtis Whiticar
on the “Howdee”, a small charter
craft which used to belong to
DeWitt Upthegrove in West Palm Beach.
The “Howdee” has caught her share of
sailfish, but when
sport fishing
went the way
of many other non-war essentials a
couple of years ago, Capt. A. A. Whiticar, Curtis’ father, bought her and refitted the craft for the more serious business
of hauling in mackerel and bluefish. She
furnished a great many thousand pounds of seafood by the hook and line method during the emergency-and is still doing it.
The trip started out right with a
rare human
element-consideration for the other fellow. As
we eased down a narrow
channel
past a moored houseboat, Capt. Curtis slowed her down to a crawl. “Has
it shoaled here?”
I
asked. “No,” he replied. “I’m just keeping our
wake from
rocking
that houseboat.”
You
can
put that down in my book
as one of the top
reasons why Curtis Whiticar
is one of the ace charter captains
of the Martin County
fleet.
Easing out the inlet in a grey dawn, we saw ugly rain squalls
north and south, but
edged between them to
the
northeast-and soon had four stout hand lines trailing,
with
two 3 ½ Drones on outriggers and a
couple of feathers astern.
Before I had
time
to get
my gloves
on those hand lines
went into
action, and
soon
there were
three big king mackerel, four blue runners, a jack, a small Spanish mackerel and about a 15 – pound barracuda threshing and flailing in the
fish box. Although the clouds
grew more
menacing, we continued on our course,
and about six
miles offshore Curtis unerringly located a small red buoy
which he had placed to mark a hidden
reef.
“Here it is,” he said. “I’ll
get
the grouper lines ready while you stow the
trolling
gear.”
He idled the
“Howdee” down and a small dolphin
struck as
I
brought
in
a
stern
line. While it was still threshing in the box
one
of the outriggers bowed-and Curtis said “Get your gloves
on for this
fellow.”
I really
needed
him
them. What a
fish! If you don’t
believe it, try hauling in a 30- pound amberjack man to man. While I was still breathing hard from this exertion; he said-“and here’s
another.” I
am now thoroughly convinced that the
only thing harder to haul in than a 30-
pound amberjack is a 35-pounder
which
was next on the bill of fare.
Meanwhile it was getting rougher. The squall hit and
we were enveloped in clouds of rain.
That
is-we
thought we were. Before we came
in we
were
to know
what real rain could look like.
Finally the sea flattened, and over went
the
grouper lines, baited with chunks of blue runner. “I
find,” said Capt. Curtis
delicately, “that the novice sometimes has
difficulty in this deep water
reef fishing.
He fails to pull fast and hard enough to take the
belly out of the line and set the hook.”
“Yeah, that’s so,” I agreed, feeling sorry for the poor novices.
There must be some other reason. Curtis
hauled in
four big grouper and a beautiful 13-pound red snapper while all I did was feed ‘em
bait
with my feeble jerks
at
the hand line.
What a fellow
needs in that sort of fishing is six-foot
arms.
All this time it had been raining intermittently, and the
sea got to kicking
up more
and
more, so we
called it a day and
started in.
Myself,
I’ll be
honest about it, if
I’d been at the helm I
wouldn’t have known which way to go. Six
miles offshore in a
rain squall, I
would probably have headed for the Bahamas.
We saw
some
beautiful sights going
in. Veering winds created a hillocky cross- chop with considerable
ground swell-and
the
flying fishes showered like little silver
birds ahead of us. Once we saw a great hammerhead shark lolling on his
side just
ahead of our bow – and it rained. A
10- pound king mackerel whanged onto an
outrigger-and I insisted on dangling him
And it
rained. It
rained like it used
to rain. It
rained
in a
solid wall, and the
little “Howdee” rode through
the
squalls without a
sight of land unerringly to
the inlet mouth. Going in over the bar
an 8-
pound
cobia
latched on a Drone, and
he was still kicking when we got inside the
river.
I had a wonderful
time. Just the memory of
hauling in that
last
35-pound
amberjack
was something. Of course,
Capt.
Whiticar, all alone one
time, using an
ordinary hand line, brought to boatside from the reef
bottom
and
landed a jew
fish which weighed 265 pounds, dressed with
head
and tail
cut off. He’s modest about it, not with a rope or
shark
hook-but with
an ordinary tarred hand line.
Back at Salerno, we unloaded our edible catch at Banks
Shelton’s fish house, and the barracuda and amberjack at
the
shark house, and were soon under cover again in the Whiticar
boathouse at Port
Sewall, where Capt. Curtis
showed me the
initial work on a 34-footer charter craft he is building
with his own hands for use in sailfishing. I
hope sometime to have the
pleasure of going out in it with
him-and
know that I will enjoy myself just as
thoroughly as I did Monday on that trim little sea boat, the “Howdee.”
Stuart News ~ 1945 - E.L.
