Syracuse man tells about the monster bluefin tuna he caught back in 1957
By David Figura/The Post-Standard
April 18, 2010, 10:00AM
http://blog.syracuse.com/outdoors/20...una_story.html
It’s a 53-year-old fish story that seems to get better every time Andrew Katko tells it.
It’s the story about the biggest fish of Katko’s life — a 500-pound, bluefin tuna that he landed when he was 23 years. He caught it while fishing with his father and younger brother, John, in the Atlantic Ocean off the shore of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia on Sept. 3, 1957.
Katko, now 77, hadn’t talked about the fish in years. But recently his wife, Marylou, caught her first fish — a northern pike about 16 inches long — and hung the photo up of her catch on the wall of the Katkos’ Syracuse home. Not to be bested, Andrew pulled out the old photo of his fish to show her what a real lunker looks like.
Born and raised in Bayonne, N.J., Katko said he came to Syracuse in 1950 as a student at LeMoyne College. While in school, he enlisted in the Army and while in the service married Marylou. He got out of the service in 1954 returned to finish off his college education at LeMoyne.
“I wanted to be a doctor, but I ended getting my degree in industrial relations,” he said.
As a boy, he remembers his father, who was dentist, taking time off every year to travel to Maine to fish for tuna.
“He’d drop me off at camp and then spend two or three days fishing,” he said. “We wanted to go every year, but he wanted us to wait until we were big enough.”
Katko said he went three times without catching a fish. And on this particular trip, his younger brother was allowed to go.
“We stayed at this place and got the call at about 5:30 a.m. from the guide,” Katko remembers. “He said Doc, there’s supposed to be a thunderstorm, heavy rain. It’s not safe ... and we all went back to bed.”
About 8:30 a.m., the guide called again, saying the sky had suddenly cleared and he was going out.
“It was like God said, ‘It’s your turn to go out.’ He just shut the rain off,” Katko remembers.
Out in the boat, the two brothers and their dad drifted in about 200 to 250 feet of water.
“We were fairly close to shore,” he said. “You could probably throw a baseball and hit it.”
They were fishing with large baitfish that measured 12-16 inches long. The poles were rigged with heavy test line — 135 pound test. A balloon was tied to the line to keep the bait at a certain depth.
Suddenly, the balloon on one line went under, indicating a bite. Katko was told by his father to take the chair where anglers sit to reel in their fish. He was strapped in so as not to be pulled out of the boat.
“What am I supposed to do?” the excited Katko said he asked his dad.
“Do whatever the deck hand tells you to do, and don’t get too excited,” his father responded.
Katko said the line “just went zing and quickly moved about 50 yards.” The deckhand told Katko to just let the fish go and to keep giving it line. It traveled about 200 to 250 yards.
As the fish slowed down, Katko said his job was to just reel and reel, keeping the line taunt.
A cable was attached to his pole to make sure the fish didn’t rip it out of his hands. The boat’s captain kept moving the boat, making sure the fish didn’t was kept away from the deep water, which would have made it more difficult to land.
“The captain gets 75 percent of the credit of anyone who catches a fish this big,” Katko said. “You can’t do it yourself.”
The fish made a number of impressive runs and Katko just kept reeling. Making matters worse was the fact that it started to rain heavily and the wind was blowing hard.
“It was raining so hard you could hardly see,” he said.
Through it all, Katko’s proud father looked on, smoking a total of five cigars while his son battled the tuna.
After more than an hour, Katko finally got the fish alongside the boat. Was he tired?
“No. Back then I was 145 pounds of muscle. I boxed a few times in college, keeping myself in shape. And that summer I worked roofer jobs,” he said.
The boat’s crew put a rope around its tail and a gaff underneath its gills. It took three men to haul the fish backwards into the boat.
“It was laying in the boat, flapped its tale, cracked a board ... and that was the end of it. He was dead,” Katko said.
What do you do with a 500-pound bluefin tuna?
The captain brought the fish to a nearby cannery and Katko was given $35 for his monster fish.
“That was big money back then,” he said. “The boat for the whole day was $55 and where we were staying was $7 to $8 a night for room and food.”
