I Was Alone, Adrift at Sea, and Speared by a Sailfish. Then My Troubles Really Started

This story, “Speared by a Sailfish,” appeared in the June 1981 issue of Outdoor Life.

Ron Abbott was crouched in the bow of his 23-foot cuddy fisherman, the comer of a cast net clenched firmly in his teeth. The boat floated on the shallow grass flats of Florida’s Indian River as dawn began to tum the sky pink. He waited for the school of silver mullet to draw within range, and then whirled the shining web of monofila­ment over them. Half a dozen fish were caught inside the net as he quickly drew the lead line to trap them. They flut­tered madly on the deck as he shook them free.

Six mullet would be enough because Abbott, as usual, was fishing alone. He flipped the big mullet into his live-well, started the outboard, and pointed the bow out Sebastian Inlet toward the Atlantic. It was an almost mirror-calm day, rare off this part of the Florida peninsula, and the rising sun burned a golden track for Abbott’s boat as he raced offshore. The 200-horse out­board motor sent him greyhounding over the low swells.

Abbott, a muscular and athletic 43-year-old, is a saltwater fishing addict. His established business as a mobile home dealer in nearby Melbourne gave him plenty of time to pursue his pas­sion. His boat, the “Miss Carolyn,” was an almost new Pro-Line rigged with every fishing option available for offshore trolling.

He followed a 120° course, running for about 45 minutes until his depth recorder marked 240 feet. This put him more than 20 miles off the inlet, near the edge of the continental shelf where the northward flowing Gulf Stream begins to make itself felt. The water was deep indigo, and had long trails of golden-orange sargasso weed where the varying currents met. The fishing should be good, Abbott surmised while he eyed the weedlines.

Always hoping for a trophy fish, a blue marlin or maybe a big shark, Abbott rigged a two-pound mullet on a heavy wire leader and hooked it lightly on a file-sharpened, live-bait hook so that it could swim freely. He dropped the bait back on a 6/0 trolling rig, then set out four lighter rods with rigged bal­ao, the hooks buried in their bellies. He trolled slowly south along the weed­ lines. Though the water looked alive, with plenty of small baitfish fluttering at the surface, no fish struck Abbott’s baits for the first hour of fishing.

At 8 a.m. the big outboard sputtered, then went dead. Abbott, used to taking care of minor problems, quickly checked the fuel lines, the battery hookups, and ignition cables. He found nothing unusual. He reported his posi­tion to the Coast Guard, but wasn’t worried. After spending years as a Coast Guardsman all over the eastern Atlantic, he had little fear of the ocean. He believed he could get the motor started, or at least get a tow from other boats in the area before long.

As he was working on the motor, his baits drifted listlessly behind the boat. Suddenly he saw the big mullet come to the surface about 50 feet behind the boat, flipping desperately. Seconds lat­er, a club-like bill rose above the bait­ fish, and then disappeared in a massive boil. Abbott grabbed the rod and fed line to the fish. Then he jammed the reel into gear and slammed the hook home. About 100 yards out a blue mar­lin weighing at least 400 pounds came raging across the surface, shaking its mighty head. The mullet sailed off the hook, but the barb was solidly fixed in the jaw of the billfish.

The fish went down and began a siz­zling run. Without the motor to help him follow the marlin, Abbott knew he had no chance. He swore as line melted from the reel. Soon the metal spool showed through, and seconds later the 80-pound-test monofilament drew taut, hummed, and snapped as the great fish gave a final good-bye leap. The line had broken at the spool.

Abbott had little time to regret the loss. The boat had drifted into a heavy weedline, and there were fish all around him. Two of the smaller reels began to howl at once; fish had struck the balao baits dead in the water and had hooked themselves.

Both fish proved to be leapers. A siz­able bull dolphin cavorted in yellow and green flashes at the end of one line. And on the other, a big Atlantic sailfish leaped toward the sky, thrashing to throw the hook.

Unable to handle both rods at once, Abbott had to decide which fish to fight. If he left one rod in the holder to fight the other, chances are the lines would become tangled and he’d lose both fish. Since he already had a good stock of dolphin fillets at home in the freezer, he clipped the line of the dol­phin rod and set the fish free. Then he turned his attention to the sailfish.

The fish leaped mightily, its sides and sail glowing an iridescent purple. It was a good sail, close to eight feet long, and it was only 30 feet from the boat. It dashed around the bow, and Abbott moved the rod around his outriggers and aerials, above the cuddy cabin and back into the cockpit. The fish then went straight under the stem, ripping line off the reel.

Then the line went slack, and 40 feet off the transom the water burst open. The sail was tailwalking wildly, and it was headed right at the boat. Abbott was more intent on catching fish than on the pos­sible danger. Only at the last instant did he realize that the sail was not going to stop.

“My God,” he thought, “he’s com­ing straight at me!”

Abbott watched in amazement as the fish came close, its bill flailing the air wildly. It rose in a last frantic jump just five feet behind the outboard, and then came over the transom in a graceful, arching leap.

Abbott danced on one foot, attempt­ing to pirouette out of the way of the fish. As he did, the sail’s sharp bill came down and plunged into his upraised left foot like a dagger. He roared in pain and surprise.

The weight of the fish slammed him to the deck, knocking the rod from his hand. He landed on his back with the fish lying across his chest.

“I grabbed the fish in a bear hug and tried to pull the spear out of my foot,” he said. “It wouldn’t budge, but I could feel the roughness of that bill rip­ping into my heel like a buzz saw. Blood began to pour from my foot.

“About that time, the fish started raising all kinds of hell.”

The force of the sailfish’s twists raised Abbott completely off the deck as he clung frantically to the fish’s tail. Abbott ricocheted off the fighting chair and slammed against the gunwales. One violent slash of the tail struck him on the mouth, and he could feel his front teeth give way from the blow. Rods snapped and tackle flew out of the boat. The deck turned crimson with blood from the gills of the hooked fish and Abbott’s heel.

“I was bouncing around, as if the deck was a trampoline,” Abbott recalls. “He ping-ponged me off just about everything hard that he could find, and almost threw me out of the boat. He had me three or four feet off the floor sometimes. One thing was sure. Wherever he went I went, because that spear was stuck in my foot like it had been welded there. I knew if we went over the side, that would be it, so I made damn sure that didn’t happen. But there wasn’t much else I could do. The power in his body was unbeliev­able.”

For what seemed like hours but was certainly not more than minutes, the fish battered Abbott, slamming his leg to the deck with each convulsion.

Finally the mad flailing ceased as the fish began to tire. Moving carefully so as not to arouse a final effort from the sail, Abbott again grasped its body near the tail and attempted to pull the bill from his agonizing wound. The coarse texture of the spear gripped his flesh, tearing at it like sandpaper.

“I have never felt pain like that. I heard myself screaming, and felt tears pouring from my eyes, and then every­ thing went black,” he recalled.

He came to slowly. The powerful smell of the big sail washed over him, mingled with the iron-tinged scent of his own blood. Midmorning sun poured into the cockpit, turning it bake­-oven hot in the calm ocean.

Abbott opened his eyes, but his vision was blurred by a mixture of blood and fish slime. Wiping at his eyes, he finally saw the fish lying next to him, the large, round eye slowly glazing in death. The tip of its spear was broken off.

Abbott looked at his injured foot and saw several inches of the thumb-thick stump protruding from his tennis shoe. The rest was inside his heel, and bright red blood was shooting from the wound with every beat of his heart, gushing around the spear and out the top of the shoe.

“Blood was every­where,” Abbott re­called. “It looked like somebody had taken a five-gallon bucket of red paint and spattered it all over the cockpit.”

Broken tackle littered the floor, and the line from the hook in the fish’s throat trailed over the gunwale. It had knocked the rod out of the boat.

But Abbott had a lot more to worry about than broken gear. “I felt myself growing weak,” he said. “The sun seemed to be burning me up, but my skin was white and clammy.”

He fought down a rising sense of panic when he realized that he was going into shock. He had spent years as a Coast Guard corpsman, and he recognized the symptoms. If he did not do some­ thing quickly he was likely to die from shock and loss of blood before help could find him. He wiped at the film in his eyes, and crawled to the big ice chest near the console. He opened the lid, thrust his bleeding foot in the ice cubes, and hoped that the cold would stanch the flow.

In a few minutes the chill of the ice took away some of the blinding pain from his foot, but he noticed from the pink water flowing out the drain hole of the chest that the foot had not stopped bleeding.

He slid his way around the ice chest to where he could reach his radio trans­mitter. Fighting back the urge to pass out, he flipped the dial to channel 16 and spoke into the microphone.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, this is the ‘Miss Carolyn’ calling the Coast Guard. Mayday!”

He slumped in the cockpit, waiting a long minute until the receiver crackled into life and he heard a response.

“‘Miss Carolyn,’” this is the Coast Guard. State the nature of your distress and your location.”

“I’ve been speared by a sailfish,” Abbott whispered.

“Say again?” the Coast Guard oper­ator replied in disbelief.

“A sailfish, right through my foot. I’m bleeding, and I’m getting shocky. My motor won’t start. I need help quick.”

“What is your location?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been adrift for almost two hours. But my recorder reads 300 feet, and I was about 20 miles off Vero Beach last time I checked.”

“Keep talking. We’ll get a radio fix on your position.”

Abbott talked. He mumbled the hap­penings that had led to his predicament; the breakdown of the motor, the escaped marlin, the dual hookup with the dolphin and the sail, and then the accident. In a few minutes the Fort Pierce Coast Guard had a line of posi­tion, and by getting a second line from another station farther down the coast, they established the location of the “Miss Carolyn” some 27 miles off­ shore.

The Coast Guard personnel could not respond, however. Its offshore rescue boat was trying to save a sinking yacht at Sebastian’s Inlet, and all of the helicopters normally based within range of the wounded angler had been transferred to Miami to cover the Cuban freedom flotilla. If Abbott was to be saved it would have to be a fellow fisherman who was a Good Samaritan. The Coast Guard sent out an appeal to all boats within miles of Abbott’s posi­tion to render assistance.

By rising to a sitting position, Abbott could see boats far away across the indigo water, their outriggers bobbing as they trolled rigged baits, but none drew any closer. Abbott sank into a daze as he waited, first 10 minutes, then 20.

All the while, the pink flow from the cooler continued, though it appeared at last to be thinning out a bit. Perhaps the bleeding was slowing down. The blood ran through the overboard drain, and Abbott could hear small fish splashing next to the boat as they came to the chum made up of his own blood. He wondered idly if the blood would even­tually bring sharks, and whether it would matter to him by that time.

Eventually the ice began to make his foot ache, and he carefully withdrew it.

To his relief he saw that most of the bleeding had finally stopped. He propped his foot on the cooler so it would be higher than his heart and the flow wouldn’t start again. His vision had cleared, and the fear he had felt earlier had subsided. Abbott now felt certain that he would survive, provided help came soon.

But he was to have a long wait. Though there were a number of boats trolling close to the “Miss Carolyn,” no angler had their radios turned on. Abbott lay in pain for an hour and a half, talking with the Coast Guard sta­tion and making futile calls to other fishermen. He watched in frustration while his depthfinder registered ever­-increasing depths as the boat drifted farther and farther offshore.

Denny Sada had been fishing for five- to six-pound school dolphin when he heard the Coast Guard call after turning his radio on during a lull in the fishing. When he checked the location of his 25-footer he realized that he should be somewhere near Ron Abbott.

Sada took in his lines and began to search for the “Miss Carolyn.” Abbott was not far off and a short run put him in view. Sada was prepared to give any aid he could, but he was not prepared for the sight that met his eyes.

The boat seemed to be covered with blood from bow to stem. Smashed tackle was everywhere, and in its midst lay Ron Abbott smeared with blood from head to foot. For a moment, Sada thought the wounded man was fin­ished. But then Abbott sat up, wiped at his crimsoned face, and managed a grim smile.

“I’m sure sorry to spoil your fishing trip,” he said.

Abbott was lifted aboard Sada’s boat for the long run back to land. Another boat, arriving shortly after Sada’s, towed in the “Miss Carolyn.” As they started to pull away Abbott shouted: “Take care of my fish. This one’s going on the wall!”

The emergency room doctor at the Indian River Medical Center in Sebas­tian worked for more than an hour try­ing to remove the embedded bill from Abbott’s foot, but with no success. The four-inch segment had penetrated al­most completely through the foot; its tip was visible under the skin on the outside of his heel. The thousands of tiny spines on the bill made it impossi­ble to withdraw it. A surgeon was called in, and after making several deep incisions, he was able to remove the spear. Abbott was on the operating table more than 3½ hours.

He went home the next day, and the first thing he did was call the local taxi­dermist to make sure his sailfish had been picked up for mounting. It had.

Abbott spent a few more days on crutches, but otherwise recovered with­out complications.

Though veteran charterboat skippers and mates believe that on rare occa­sions sails and other billfish will attempt to slash or spear anglers in their boatside battles to escape, Ron Abbott is convinced his ordeal was caused by nothing more than bad luck.

“That sailfish meant no harm; he was only trying to get away,” he said. “You could fish out there a hundred years and never have anything like that happen again.”

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Probably so, but several lessons are clear from his experience. First is that any big-game fish is capable of inflict­ing serious injury, even on experienced anglers. Second is that fishing far off­shore alone subjects an angler to some unusual risks — boat breakdowns and medical problems or accidents are far worse when there is no one to help. And third, though a radio transmitter is a great safety asset, it’s no guarantee of a quick rescue when trouble strikes.

But Ron Abbott’s love of saltwater fishing is irrepressible. Within two weeks of the accident, he was looking for more blue water adventure. And, once again, he was fishing alone.