Oh, The Joys Of Losing Fish

The great fish—notably the tunas—that migrate through the open sea are built for speed and stamina, and so are the sportfishing boats that chase them, costly craft with cavernous gas tanks, a fact that bodes well for the future of the fish. But that is another story. Those who can still afford to go after the great fish nearly always do so with five-pound reels, rods like broomsticks, 80-to 150-pound-test lines and heavy ropes for displaying their catch at dockside. And then there is Tred Barta of New York City, admirer of tunas, swordfish, marlin and mako sharks, an extreme conservationist, though he didn't plan it that way, and the originator of a philosophy he calls "the joy of losing fish."

The 27-year-old Barta courts joy with wispy lines. His favorite fish to not catch is the yellowfin tuna, a very tough little number. For five years Barta had a perfect record with yellowfins; he hooked 110 of them on six-pound-test and lost them all. Meanwhile he was spending up to 25 hours a week studying kinetic-energy tables, test strengths, hook designs, reel drags and reel-spool dynamics. In August 1978 he hooked yellowfin No. 111. He fought it for three hours and 27 minutes, and he won. The loser weighed 63� pounds, a world record—by an astonishing 30� pounds—for six-pound line.

"No one understood what I was doing out there all those years," Barta says, reflecting on that feat. "In our society the only thing that counts is a fish on the dock—results. So I really had to have my act together. When I'd come back and say, 'I had the greatest trip of my life. I blew a 350-pound mako shark on six,' people just didn't understand."

People never have.

In the spring of Barta's senior year at Maine's Hinckley School, as part of an independent study program, he set out for two months alone in the wilderness north of the Rangeley Lakes region. A paper about the experience was to have been entitled What Is Man? It wound up What Am I? "I was confused," Barta recalls. "I figured that by isolating myself from the outside world I would establish a more meaningful set of values than the ones I had."

For two weeks he cried every night and then one morning he woke and said to himself, "I'm miserable, and I'm going to be here another 45 days, so I'd better start doing things differently." He discovered that even the most menial chores, making lean-tos, for example, could be rewarding. "I had to make them so that I was proud of them," he says, "because there was no one to tell me how good they looked.

"I'd known nothing of true personal satisfaction. I didn't know who I was. I was what people said I was, captain of the ski team, captain of the tennis team, what others wanted me to be. Six-pound-test line? Ha, the Tred Barta of those days would be out there with a harpoon, filling the boat with sharks, to impress the people on the dock."

Barta enrolled in the University of Colorado, mainly for the skiing. He was a business major, but, he says, "They were training people to be accountants, to fit into corporate niches, and I wanted to be an entrepreneur." So he quit after his sophomore year and went to work for his father's firm, Joseph T. Barta Associates, Inc. of Armonk, N.Y., dealers in used—they call them prior-owned—executive aircraft. Tred handles all the purchasing, he has logged more than 4,500 hours as a pilot, including eight crossings of the Atlantic, and he loves his job. But he has come to love his days at sea much more. "Business doesn't offer you the essential conflict that nature does," he says. But nature doesn't offer you the essential means of purchasing $60,000 custom offshore boats with cruising ranges of 320 miles, such as Barta's 2-year-old, 32-foot Forest and Johnson Prowler, Randi-Strike.

After work on a recent Friday Barta flew a company twin-engine Beechcraft to Westhampton, on Long Island, where he and his wife of three years, Randi, had a house for the summer. He sharpened hooks until 1:30 a.m., set the alarm for 3, and at 4 the Randi-Strike passed through nearby Shinnecock Inlet—minus Randi, as usual—heading southwest. Barta's destination was the Hudson Canyon, a deep cleft in the ocean bottom at the edge of the continental shelf. Randi-Strike would be all alone out there. Few other Long Island boats ever make the 80- to 110-mile run. "Some people call me crazy for going out so far, that there are plenty of fish closer to land," says Barta. "But I know what the capabilities of my boat are, and besides, there's something very romantic about being out there. I feel sorry for those people, and they probably feel sorry for me."

As his boat headed for the canyon, Barta outlined his strategy for the day. He would troll five baits, ballyhoo on two 12-pound-test lines and squid on two sixes and a four. That meant some quick decisions would have to be made. As Barta said on the way out, "If a yellowfin takes a six and I know it's under 64 pounds, the record, I won't think twice about breaking it off. If we see a swordfish about 200 pounds we'll try to get it with a 20-pound outfit—we've got those; the record is 196 pounds. But if it's much smaller we'll go to six, because the record is only 106. And if we see a big sword, say 700 pounds, we'll break out the 50-pound-test; the record on 50 is only 450 pounds." Barta fishes only for records, of which he holds three, with two pending.