Fishing Match

Heavy ground swells, remnants of a recent hurricane, rocked the massive ferry taking me from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Queasy and cowering below deck, I wondered what I had gotten myself into as the six and a half hours of the voyage rolled by all too slowly. It was an inauspicious start to my participation in the 16th Intercollegiate Game Fish Seminar and Fishing Match in Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, slated to take place August 29 to September 1, 1971.

Just a week earlier, out of the blue, I had received an invitation to join the University of Toronto fishing team, preparing to take part in the match. I had just graduated from the university as a physics and chemistry major, and was awaiting the start of a year of teacher training at the university's College of Education. I had never heard of the fishing team and knew nothing about deep-sea fishing, but I did happen to know the team captain in another context, and he was desperate to find someone to fill in for a student who couldn't make the trip.

Bowl commemorating the 16th Annual Intercollegiate Game Fish Seminar and Fishing Match, held August 29 to September 1, 1971, in Wedgeport, Nova Scotia.

To my relief, the ferry made it to Yarmouth without capsizing, and we settled into a hotel with the other college teams competing in the three-day tournament. Five teams were from Canada (Dalhousie, New Brunswick, St. Francis Xavier, Toronto, and Western Ontario) and five were from the United States (Dartmouth, Harvard, Massachusetts, Princeton, and Yale), along with "special guest" teams from Japan and Mexico.

Members of the 1971 University of Toronto Fishing Team: (back row, left to right) Michael Vaughan (team coach), Gus Abols, Ivars Peterson; (front row) Tom Tobin, Gerry Brosky.

Sponsored by the government of Nova Scotia, the match and accompanying seminar were meant to introduce game fishing, particularly for bluefin tuna, as a tourist pastime. The tournament trophy went to the team bringing in the largest haul of fish, by weight, over three days of angling at sea.

Each of the three days of the tournament started at 5:30 a.m., with breakfast and the drive to the Wedgeport docks on Goose Bay. Each team was assigned to a lobster boat, together with its captain and crew, and set off at 7:00 a.m. for a day of saltwater fishing.

All the boats spent the morning of the first day chasing after tuna. We took turns strapped into a chair at the boat's stern, handling a massive rod and reel. A second baited line trailed 30 feet or so behind the boat as we cruised along. No luck.

For the rest of time, we had the option of continuing to fish for tuna (boring and likely fruitless) or of heading for the offshore shallows (banks) where cod, haddock, halibut, and pollock came to feed. But it would take a large haul of cod to match the weight of one bluefin tuna, which could weigh as much as 900 pounds.

Typical lobster boat used in the fishing competition.

The captain of our boat proved particularly adept at locating the specific shallows where cod congregated, and we began to jig for cod. It was actually too easy. We simply dropped a baited line into the water, waited for a tug, set the hook, and hauled the fish up. However, despite the beautifully sunny, calm weather, I was seasick for much of the first day and contributed very little to the team's efforts.

When we located a school of cod, the boat would slowly pass back and forth over the area while we  hooked as many fish as we could. I found it astonishing that, at times, even when we were well out of sight of land, we could see the bottom and watch cod greedily snap at the baited hooks. Among the few fish that we threw back into the water were the small sharks known as dogfish, which preyed on cod. 

University of Toronto team members Michael Vaughan, Gerry Brosky, and Gus Abols with a fishing match judge weighing the day's catch.

We had to keep track of the time and where we were so that we could get back to the Wedgeport dock before each day's deadline. There, our catch would be recorded, with judges keeping track of the total weight and the weight of the largest individual fish brought in by the team. The fish were kept moist throughout the day to help boost the score. The entire catch went to local people.

The "seminar" part took place in the evening after dinner, with seemingly interminable slide shows about sport fishing, with a focus on saltwater pursuits. Many participants found it easy to doze off in the darkened room, given such an early start, an exhausting day hauling up fish, a substantial dinner, and some late-night partying.

Saved by the motion sickness remedy Gravol, I did much better on the remaining two days of the tournament, contributing my share to the haul of cod. I could even enjoy the delicious fish chowder, thick with potatoes and onions, prepared by the boat's crew. It was an appetizing lunchtime alternative to the dry chicken sandwiches with which we had left in the morning, but it also meant sacrificing one of the fish that we had caught.

By the third day, thanks to our canny captain, we also began to believe that we had a shot at the title. Late that afternoon, we had to decide whether to take one more pass across a lucrative fishing ground and potentially incur a penalty for arriving back late or simply return. We decided not to take the risk but still came in with the largest catch of the day, 475 pounds of fish.

Official fishing match badge.

But it wasn't enough. The Dalhousie team's three-day total beat our total by 19 pounds, roughly the equivalent of one cod.

Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia): 1,236

University of Toronto: 1, 217

Princeton University: 852

Yale University: 720

Harvard University: 713

St. Francis Xavier University (Antigonish, Nova Scotia): 562

Mexico: 557

University of Massachusetts: 518

University of New Brunswick: 487

University of Western Ontario: 417

Japan: 357

The largest fish caught was a 43-pound cod, landed by a member of the Harvard team. 

And that ended my brief foray into intercollegiate fishing competition.