Fishing: Fishing on film a reel thriller

Giant black marlin were common off Peru in the 1950s. Photo / Supplied

The birth of big game fishing reads like a movie tale, and in fact the largest marlin ever caught on rod and reel actually featured in a famous movie.

It was the time of King Kong who in 1933 emerged from the mists of Skull Island to climb the two-year-old Empire State Building. A time when America's sporting aristocracy had embraced big game fishing on a par with terrestrial big game hunting. A time when writers such as Zane Grey fired the popular imagination and big game fishing documentaries drew thousands to theatres.

Pioneers such as Grey and Ernest Hemingway and others brought back tales of huge fish with even bigger fish breaking off, for the gear could not handle many of the monsters and these legendary anglers shared ideas and knowledge.

Frustrated by the gear available and convinced they could land some of the fish they were losing to frozen drags, stripped gears and spooled lines, a small group of Florida charter captains worked out the design principles they needed and connected with a World War I Navy veteran who specialised in repairing boat engines and did a little reel repair work on the side — Fred Grieten.

He worked at a company named Finley Norwood, and by 1935 he had shortened the name to Fin-Nor, which became legendary in fishing tackle.

Grieten had the mechanical genius required to create a reel built to match and exceed the needs of these fish-fighting legends.

The story of the tackle development parallels the birth of big game fishing and its explosion on the east coast from Miami to the Florida Keys, north to Montauk and Novia Scotia, and 80km across the Gulf Stream to Bimini in the Bahamas.

Vacationing sportsmen fuelled the growth of a large charter fleet and the captains pioneered and improved techniques such as using kites to set baits from game boats, the use of fighting chairs, outriggers and drop-back bait trolling.

The industry grew, then attention shifted to the Bimini chain of islands in the Bahamas and one of the most influential relationships born at Bimini was that between Hemingway and Michael and Helen Lerner.

Lerner made his fortune with his family's chain of retail stores and retired at 40 to pursue big game fishing with a passion and zeal that would lead to sponsoring research, founding a marine laboratory and in 1939 founding the IGFA.

Stories were common of tackle lost, broken and stripped as giant tuna and marlin were hooked regularly. The other big problem was sharks attacking hooked fish.

A report from the Miami Herald on May 1, 1933 said that while Mrs Gifford catches a 235lb marlin, Captain Gifford killed some sharks with a rifle while trying to maintain control of the boat.

Once, he shoved a two-inch pole into the mouth of a shark as it was about to seize the marlin, and the shark bit the pole in two. Another tuna estimated at 500lb was ruined by sharks and all that was left of the big tuna was the head and shoulders.

The need to land big fish quickly to keep them from sharks was a key factor in the development of effective reels. Hemingway kept a Thompson submachine on his boat to shoot at the sharks attacking the hooked fish. Today's anglers know the faster a fish can be subdued, the greater its chance of survival.

Production stopped during World War II and then in 1952 the world's first 1000-pounder ("grander") was caught. One of Fin-Nor's champions, Alfred Glassell Jr., caught the 1025lb black marlin at Cabo Blanco, a new fishery on Peru's Pacific coast which thrived on the multitudes of pilchards found in those waters.

But this was only the beginning. No story of big game fishing would be complete without the story of Ernest Hemingway's 1952 novella, The Old Man and the Sea: Cabo Planco and Alfred Glassell Jr.'s still standing world record 1560lb black marlin.

For his work, Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

The Old Man and the Sea was made into a motion picture in 1958 starring Spencer Tracy as Hemingway's Cuban fishing protagonist, Santiago. The movie won several Academy Awards, and many consider Old Man to be the most defining work of Hemingway's literary career.

When the picture went into production in 1953, they sought a filming location with the greatest likelihood of getting good footage of a large marlin being caught. Even its remoteness couldn't diminish the fact that Cabo Blanco, Peru, was hands-down the place to go.

What the Old Man's film crew got on the afternoon of August 4, however, exceeded their wildest imagination and surely must rank on the list of all-time luckiest film shoots ever made. That afternoon, Glassell hooked his world record 1560-pound Pacific black marlin and the footage used in the film was that of Glassell catching the largest billfish ever taken on rod and reel.

With the film crew documenting the fight, he landed the record that still stands today. An astounding total of 38 grander black marlin were caught in the first 12 years of the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club but Peru's political instability coupled with a decline in the pilchard fishery led to the eventual closing of the club in 1958.

Bite times
Bite times are 5.30am and 5.50pm tomorrow, and 6.15am and 6.40pm on Sunday. More fishing action can be found at GTTackle.co.nz.