Motoring south at a leisurely 12.5 knots, Captain Etzel reached his destination -- a seemingly empty stretch of sea above a submerged outcrop known as the Rockpile, 22 miles south of Montauk Point -- around 9 A.M. "I caught a 475-pound mako in this very spot 10 years ago," he said.
He once caught a 240-pound blue marlin.
Five years ago he caught a 705 pound tuna off Ambrose Lights-a U.S. record which still stands.
A customer chimed in: "I caught a 13-pound striped bass with a chicken bone as bait.
Mr. Kirk, 76, had caught a 40-pound catfish days before, so he knows a little something about when it is and when it isn't too hot to fish.
With their friend, Tressell Hawkins, 43, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Hall set out Aug. 21 on a fishing trip from Matagorda Bay on a 23-foot catamaran after hearing about another fisherman who had caught a 300-pound swordfish the previous weekend.
On a recent evening, family members rushed to the pier to greet one boat that had caught a 410-pound bluefin, whose tear-shaped body had to be hoisted off the boat's deck with a forklift.
Murray and I began by fishing the Home Pool, directly opposite the camp, where, with a yellow surface stonefly given me by Joan Wulff, I caught a 13-pound salmon.
As The Breakaway approached the dock, someone shouted from a passing boat, "The Susie E. caught a 600-pound mako!" Over at the yacht club's weigh-in dock, Lisa Natanson, a 41-year-old research biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Narragansett, R.I., confirmed that the Susie E. of Rye Brook, in Westchester, had brought in a 609-pound female mako.
