Handlines, large and small

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The Ancient Art of Hand-lining

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These days, most of us have a substantial investment in rods, reels, and all the pricey accompanying accoutrements. Yet, there was a time in America when a fishing outfit was an expensive luxury that many a family found too rich for their meager budgets. Such were the days for the late Jupiter/Palm Beach Correspondent, Art Harris, who began his youthful fishing career catching fish using a simple handline.

By ART HARRIS, The Jupiter Courier

My very first fishing experience came when I was a 7-year-old kid in Dallas. Dad would take me to Lake Cliff Park. And there I'd fish with worms on a handline from a small bridge across a tiny creek. It was a thrill, catching four-inch bluegills. Meanwhile, my father (a salesman but no angler) sat in the car studying his order books.

Thus, you could say I learned fishing on my own, from the ground up. "Ground", did I say? Into a mysterious hole in the ground near the water's edge, I'd occasionally drop a bait. And I hauled up scary-looking (to me) crawdads. Such versatility led me to believe that, with a handline, you could catch almost ANYTHING!

In later years, I was to find that maybe this ambitious premise was not too far off, at that. (But read on!)

The next step in this primitive piscatorial pursuit was a major discovery I made at age 1 1. I was still using a handline for bluegills, but now the scene shifts from Dallas to Carlsbad, N.M. One summer, my parents and I visited Carlsbad Caverns. We stayed at a nearby resort called Black River Village. It was here that I ventured down to the river with my handline and (what in those days was literally) a can of worms. I crawled into a rowboat tied to the dock, and dangled a handline over the side. It was my first time in a boat, and I was thrilled to discover that I could catch bluegills on my handline from a boat, too.

But the Big Thing I suddenly realized was that I could go fishing BY MYSELF, and even catch fish!

Let me digress for a moment to describe an intriguing low-cost tackle development in the Bahamas. It's the "something in between" that we hinted at in the title. This tackle "something" is sort of a hybrid between a spinning reel and a handline. Ingenious native youngsters take an empty beer can, wrap monofilament line around it, rig a hook and bait, and let'er rip. It casts like a spinning reel and retrieves like a handline. A genuine imitation hybrid.

The other extreme of the handline experience came 40 years later. I'd graduated from handlines long ago, but this particular incident showed that handlines still have their place in fishing. A week before, I'd been fishing offshore (no handlines) and was filleting a grunt for snapper bait. The knife slipped, and Imanaged to ram several of the grunt's dorsal spines into the knuckle of my first finger, right hand. It smarted some!

A week later, the knuckle was still swollen and sore, but a friend made me an offer I couldn't refuse. It would be another first-time fishing experience, on Burt's 44-foot commercial kingfish boat out of Sebastian Inlet. When the early-morning kingfish bite was over (about 1 0 a.m.), Burt announced his intention to bottom-fish for grouper, until the king bite picked up again around 4 p.m. So we anchored on the edge of an 80-foot-deep hole. And out came the handlines. These were 250-pound-test monofilament with 5-pound cannonball sinkers and hooks with a 3-inch span. Pretty hefty tackle! Each line was wrapped around an 18-inch strip of plywood, an industrial-size version of the 3-inch bluegill-rigs with their split-shot sinkers, of my childhood.

For bait, we had the innards of all those fresh-caught kingfish, carefully saved in a bucket of shaved ice in the hold. Now, anchored in a strong current, we let the baits down. We could feel those 5-pound weights hit bottom, hold for a couple of seconds, then drift loose and "go with the flow".

Rather than hold on to those hefty rigs, we wrapped the lines around the crosswise "unhooker bar" (at the aft end of any kingfish boat). We wrapped them in such a way that they wouldn't unwind, but a strike would bring the plywood line-holder up to slam against the unhooker bar. Almost immediately, we had a terrific strike that straightened out that big, super-strong hook. No telling what it was. But minutes later, I managed (it was definitely hard work!) to haul in a 30- pound black grouper. We were truly on a roll, but the Big One was yet to come.

My line-frame slammed up against the unhooker bar. We were all, of course, wearing heavy cotton work gloves, so I grabbed the line and began to pull. That was when I realized I had a really serious fish on the other end. It was only after several minutes of strenuous effort, AND with the help of the mate, that I was able to haul the critter up to the transom (what real mariners call the "covering board"). The fish hung there, glaring up at us with little piggy eyes. It was a nurse shark about seven feet long and weighing easily 200 to 225 pounds. What to do? We didn't want to cut the line and lose the hook and especially that big sinker. We couldn't gaff it, haul it into the boat, simply unhook it, or whatever.

Finally, however, the shark solved the problem for us. With a sudden mighty lurch, the critter broke loose. That 250-pound-test line snapped --- right across my gloved (but still mighty sore) swollen knuckle. Oh, but that smarted!

I haven't been handlining since. I have nothing against handlines. It's just that I thought I'd quit while I was ahead, rather than continuing, and hoping to catch a BIGGER fish on a handline.