2012. The day the fishery Hemingway loved arrived in Italy: the Big Game

Welcome to the special section “BAM 35 Years.” We are presenting “cult” articles from the Motor Boats archive, starting in 1990. A journey through time among stories unobtainable today, even in the great sea of the internet! A dive into the world of epic moments in motor boating. Here is one of the stories we were most passionate about.

Big Game, the day it came to Italy from the U.S.

From Motor Boats 2012, no. 3, April, pp. 78-83.

Fishing from the most famous and coveted boat in the early days was an adventure and a gamble. Especially we Italians did not know how it was done. History of the first Italian Big Game.

Big Game Fishing the spectacular fishing technique born in the United States in the 1930s, which has its greatest cantor in the writer Ernest Hemingway, is an increasingly consolidated reality in Italy, too, in our seas. There is no port where a host of enthusiasts do not lurk; more and more boats are being used for Big Game deep-sea fishing. Super-equipped boats with an ever-increasing level of sophistication, making it possible to catch tuna of unthinkable size. But in the early days of Big Game drifting, things were not like that. Months ago a frayed book turned up in the newsroom, “Tuna Fishing” by Daniele Benfenati, the first Italian bible of this type of fishing. And we read with great relish and admiration the story of the birth of Italian Big Game. Here is an excerpt of this sea fishing adventure in the early 1970s, which can be catalogued in history as the first Italian drifting(Big Game) fishing.

A fellow doctor in Santa Margherita Ligure tells my father(Adamo) that he has heard that in France, in Port de Bouc, at the mouth of the Rhone, professional fishermen catch giant tuna with rod and reel! At home he doesn’t save us anymore! Father looks like an animal in a cage, he doesn’t give himself peace, he constantly repeats that if he had a chance to see even for an instant how those in Port de Bouc do it, he would be sure to catch at least one. In early August I go home on vacation. Over dinner one evening, I take him at his word: I’ll take you to Port de Bouc in the morning! Said and done, we set off in the morning. In less than 8 hours we grind the 900-plus kilometers and by early afternoon we arrive in a fantastic little village. With four words of French and two of Bolognese we reach the fish market where we find a quaint character willing to take us on his boat to see how “le Ton Rouge” is fished. At 5 a.m. the next morning we head out. The boat is a pontil wooden gozzo type with an inboard. Near the rudder we see the rods bolted to the deck. They protrude the entire length of the shaft from the edge, have huge ring loops, 16/0 Penn Senator reel, 1.60 mm nylon and hook tied directly to the nylon. A couple of miles from shore our skipper stops, pulls out two mackerel (mackerel) from a bucket and proceeds to the (for us at the time) complicated priming operation with rather curious equipment: wool hook, brass pipe (deboner), knife, needle and thread. Having finished the priming of the first mackerel, the commander has my father perform the second priming, who, like a good doctor, executes it perfectly. We start trolling at 2 or 3 knots in a calm sea, with greenish water and not too clear, in the company of other boats similar to ours. We didn’t hook the tuna that day, but we nevertheless managed to see two boats with “tuna in the barrel” and understood the power of those behemoths. The local fishermen, once they have hooked the fish (trolling hooks itself) stop the engine and let the fish go on the run and use the reel like a winch, every now and then giving two or three turns of the crank letting the tuna tire itself out, the only concern being to keep the nylon on the line at all times. By the time the tuna gets under the boat, it is already practically exhausted and is easily refished.

The decidedly good day had taught my father everything there was to know about tuna fishing; he put the rest in later. We returned home the same day with our enthusiasm sky-high and with the conviction that our Po Delta was a paradise. We had to wait until the following year for our first catch! On August 15, 1971, Dad, Furio and my sister-in-law went out to sea at dawn. The sea is a plank, the dull thuds of tuna can be heard several miles away. The bait prepared at Port de Bouc is perfect, a few minutes of trolling on the edge of the blue water and there’s the hook! It is certain that dogged determination for that longed-for catch prevailed. With no chair and no combat belt, my brother at the bow sitting on the rod retrieving the slipped nylon, my father at the wheel keeping the boat heading, after more than three hours they got right with that behemoth. At the scales it weighed in at 152 kg. The excitement was such that they loaded the fish into the trunk of the car, with all the tail sticking out, and took it home to feast on with friends, who were incredulous at that catch. In the following days my father and brother built the fighting chair, the raffio and devised a shoulder belt to be able to fight with more sportsmanship, but also with more ease. It should be kept in mind that at that time in Italy there were no magazines specializing in Big Game, let alone equipment stores, so inventiveness and imagination were crucial. My father also stuffed the head of that first tuna of his that I still keep like a relic. Almost every year he caught his giant. In 1974 my mother also had the good fortune to participate, in the role of skipper, in another of his catches. Every tuna he caught he would donate to the Asylum or the Scardovari Fishermen’s Cooperative. After each catch she would stow away her sea gear and turn her attention to trout or black bass.

One catch a year made him happy and fulfilled and he felt no need or desire to ask for more. In the years that followed he had many followers. In 1982 he founded the Barricata Tuna Club with the intention of passing on that enthusiasm, loyalty and determination worthy of a true Angler. He always fought against pollution and irresponsible catches, capable only of depleting the sea. He taught us sportsmanship, modesty and respect for the sea. Today, techniques and equipment have evolved, fishing clubs have proliferated and every marina is full of fishermen equipped for deep-sea fishing. Big Game is an indisputable reality in the Italian seas. A little of this we owe to him, too!

by Daniele Benfenati