Capturing Chaos
An Atlantic sailfish clears the water, sail flared and lit through.
Ivan was quiet on the boat. It was the stillness of a man who is better at this than you are and feels no need to say so. He watched water the way a reader watches a page.
He was the best fisherman I have known. That is a large thing to say. I have spent many hours on other men’s boats, with a camera and with a rod, next to people who are very good at this. I am telling you he was better.
What he wanted most was mutton. He fished them off the bottom on a leader longer than most people would bother with, and he caught them when nobody else did. A long leader on the bottom brings up muttons. It also brings up sharks, one after another, for as long as you care to keep fishing.
Ivan hated sharks.
So they called him Ivan the Shark Slayer. He would get another one to the boat, somebody would say it, and he would say something back that I am not going to print. It happened often enough to be a ceremony. He knew exactly what that leader was going to cost him. He paid it every time out and he never changed the rig. He was generous with his time and with his help. He would give up a weekend on the water to spend it with his daughter.
I owed him.
The first of July, 2023. The One More Bite tournament, ESE of Stuart, aboard the DayMaker with Nick Cremasco at the wheel and Justin mating. Jason and Jimmy and Ivan and me on the rods. The day before had given us almost nothing and none of us brought it up.
Then the sailfish came up.
One in the morning, lit and greyhounding, and then another, and at some point it stopped being a day and turned into a story. Ivan had one of them on the rod.
Fishing with your friends is a good day. A sailfish released makes it a great one. I did not know yet that there was anything above that.
At a quarter past ten I found out.
I should tell you that I had never seen a blue marlin. Not from any boat, in all the years I had been doing this.
What I remember is the water.
I was not ready for how much of it there was. A sailfish comes up and throws spray. A blue marlin throws the ocean. The fish kept disappearing inside the thing it was making.
Seventeen seconds, first frame to last.
I remember it as longer. I remember it as nowhere near long enough. Ivan had his feet set and the rod bent over him and he was laughing. So was I. I do not think either of us said one word that would look like anything written down.
Then the hook came free. The line went slack and the water closed. There was nothing out there. The day did not stop. Another sailfish came up that afternoon and I got it whole and lit in the air, and it is the best photograph I made that day. Ivan was still Ivan. Nobody sat down.
We came in that evening and we did not place.
Ivan died the following year. I have been back through the marlin pictures more times than I would admit to, looking for the one I missed. It is not in there. The fish is never clear in any of them. You can see something enormous happening behind a wall of white and a bill coming up out of it, and that is all there is. I have kept every one of them. The last picture I took of that fish is a picture of water, deep and blue.
By Robert Webb
Robert Webb specializes in offshore sportfishing action photography, shot from moving boats. Local to Stuart. See more of his work at robertwebbphotos.com.
