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With the information-dominant Internet, incessant breaking news reports everywhere and excessive ---— and annoying — cell phone communication, nothing stays a secret very long these days. Such information, however, if founded to be a rumor, hearsay, or innuendo can, more often than not, be dead wrong.

With that said, all one needs to do is make the informational subject at hand be about fishing and that just accelerates the process at least a hundred fold.

And that’s where this week’s story begins.

It had been a super long morning charter; not in time expended but in the anxiety level produced when trying to catch fish that either aren’t there or just “ain’t eating.” We hadn’t done well for the nice family from the Heartland and I was in the process of licking my wounds and cleaning the boat when the main characters in our story took center stage.

“You the captain?” That was the opening salvo from a couple of guys who looked like extras from a gangster movie.

I responded in the affirmative, turned off the hose and hung on for whatever came next.

“We hear that you guys are catching “toona” right in close to the beach. You know about that?”

“We’ve been catching some nice fish nearshore and there are schools of a small skipjack type tuna called a Little Tunny being caught in amongst the Spanish Mackerel and Kingfish” was my elongated reply.

They shot back with “You’re confusing us. Are they tuna or aren’t they?”

Trying to clarify the issue, I explained that they technically were tuna but a world of difference existed between the quality albacore and yellowfin tuna that we all relished and these peripheral species.

“What’s that ‘peripheral’ stuff mean? Does it mean you can eat them?”

Exasperated, I related the fact that most of our Gulf fish may be eaten. However, the quality and taste of the filets from some fish may make even the most tolerant appetite blanch. I offered a word of caution that the filets from these “toona” might well be included in the major blanching category.

That didn’t stop our big game specialists who related tales of their great skills in smoking and marinating filets. There would be no blanching for this duo. They wanted to go for this Southwest Florida tuna opportunity. We booked a trip for later in the week.

Would you believe it, if I told you the two of them showed up the morning of the charter with a huge empty cooler for the filets? Well, they did! It was enormous; too big to fit on the boat so we left it at the dock.

Our plan was to head to the sea buoy and gold hook a live well full of thread herring but something got in our way. As we hit the channel outer markers, the water exploded with leaping fish and diving bird. We had no choice but to set out some big long feather jigs on 17 pound test rigs and start a troll along the perimeter of the furious action.

As we sailed the action pool, our two bedazzled anglers were screaming “Look at all the fish! How come they don’t strike our jig?”

Their frustration was short lived as two tunny’s hit with a vengeance and headed in different directions with our two, now frantic, anglers trying to figure out what to do next.

Coaching them to keep pressure on the fish and follow its movement from port to starboard didn’t help much. The two tunnies were exercising these two to the max. Albeit a cool morning, they were both sweating like draft horses and cursing like stable hands.

Time rolled on and finally the agitated tunny were drawing near and then finally were in the boat. The two anglers were trying to uncramp their hands and arms and thus the celebration was kind of moot. But there was no hesitation as we unhooked the valiant fish and they pointed disposition to the cooler — even with a last minute plea as to mercy from yours truly.

The action was still fabulous. We reset out rigs; made a turn back into the action pool and within minutes we were into it again — and so the morning went. We weren’t always as lucky as that first go around and missed more tunnies than we landed. The time seemed to mercifully melt away but we still finished with a formidable number of fish in the cooler.

As we headed back, they both were flat out exhausted and essentially immobile and trying to work out the lingering hand and arm cramps. They came back to life as we swung the fish up onto the cleaning table.

“Do a good job on the toona, captain. We don’t want to miss any meat”

Little tunny flesh is so blood red, it is crimson with but two smaller strips of lighter colored flesh (but still blood red) above the lateral mine. The two of them watched every knife stroke and made sure nothing was wasted.

They were ebullient as they talked about the cookout for the family that evening with these two great “hunters” providing the main course. “We’ll marinate the strips just a little and put ‘em on the grill. Everyone loves fresh tuna!”

I just winced.

They loaded the filets into the cavernous cooler and were off with boisterous smiles and high fives.

As fate would have it, in their haste to leave the boat one of the two left a pair of prescription sunglasses on the boat. I called them later that evening and arranged to give the glasses to them the next day.

I was surprised when a young lady showed up at the marina to pick up the glasses the next day.

“Hi, I’m the daughter and came to pick up my Dad’s glasses.”

I couldn’t resist. “How did the tuna dinner go last night?”

This time, she winced. “Not very well, the fish was so strong! We called the pizza parlor to save the day. My dad didn’t want to come down here this morning because he knew you’d ask.”

Amen.

---

Capt. Bill Walsh owns an established Marco Island charter fishing business and holds a current U.S. Coast Guard license. Send comments or questions to dawnpatrolcharters@compuserve.com