Hand to Hand With a Tuna

23

BY FRANCIS W. DAVIS MRS. DAVIS AND I were fishing at Great Point, one of the few people who could go there because running on the beach with a car that didn't have four-wheel drive made it difficult. With my experience at Pierce-Arrow Co. I learned enough to drive on the sand. Four-wheel-drive vehicles were not yet available.

Mrs. Davis caught the first bluefish that had been taken from the beach that summer — 1939.

Late in the afternoon, the tide went down and before dark, Mrs. Davis said, "Let's go around to the inside of the Point where there are two or three pools to dig some clams." One pool was about 60 yards across and 10 feet deep in the center. There was great motion in the pool and I cast a few times with a lure but the fish that was in there didn't want that. He wanted back into the ocean. It was low tide then.

My wife went over to the other side of the pool where the clams were. I said, "I'm going to play with him to see what I can do." I stripped down to my shorts and took a shovel from the car and went into the pool about five feet deep, and watched the fish go by me in circles. Each time he would go by I would splash the water with the shovel. That caused him to swim a bit faster and when he came nearer the beach in back of me and then raced up into shallow water in front of me and was flopping, I ran up into the shallow water where he had to flop a few times to get back into deep water. I ran up alongside the fish and with my eyes shut, I reached down and with three heaves I had him on the beach. I then killed him and weighed him and found it was a sixty-pound tuna.

He was much too big to go in my regular fish box so I stopped at the ice house where they had a floor of ice and told the iceman I would come down the next morning and pick up the fish. Next morning, when I went to the ice house, there were a lot of people standing along side the little wooden platform looking at the fish lying there, with their eyes popped out. They all said, "What did you catch him on and how long did it take?" First I made up a story about the lure and the rod and struggle I had with him; then, one of the onlookers, Gibby Manter, whom I knew very well, came over to me and said, "Mr. Davis, I opened his mouth and I didn't see any hook marks. Then I had to tell him the truth about how I picked him up and threw him on the beach.

We cut him up in pieces and gave him to friends and he was very good eating because the tuna fish that we get in the market

Francis W. Davis and his 60-lb. tuna which he landed on Great Point in one of the most unique fishing exploits in island annals. The catch was made in 1939.

HAND TO HAND WITH A TUNA 25

we get from 200 to 300 pounds and up and are only caught 20 or 30 miles offshore.

I had quite a few experiences with other fish and over the years have landed a 21-pound bluefish on the east shore near Great Point. I also landed a 48-pound bass at Great Point a few years ago.

From all records, I have never heard of any tuna being caught on the beaches. They are all offshore and much bigger than the baby tuna I struggled with.

Catboat Lillian, a familiar sight in Nantucket harbor 75 years ago.