Dennis Anderson in Antigua: Fishing for adventure

ANTIGUA, WEST INDIES -- Louie untied the last line that tethered the boat to the dock and we eased out of the cove and its turquoise water and into the bay.

In the bay, a huge hawksbill turtle swam alongside us briefly in water that shaded first to azure before morphing to emerald and finally to sapphire. Beyond the bay lay the tumultuous Atlantic.

I had awoken at 5, poured coffee, showered and eaten breakfast, just as I had every day last week. Each morning in the hour thereafter, the sun outside my window threw itself from ever-higher angles, first onto a fica tree and its blood-red berries, then to festoons of scarlet bougainvillea.

Soon, hummingbirds were aflight and the cooing of doves was continual.

Louie arrived at 8, and when he did the winds were the same as they were at 5: strong from the northeast.

Louie and I motored out of the bay and into open water and its foam-topped rollers. As we did, Louie pointed the bow into the teeth of the wind while I hooked two 5-foot-long steel leaders to our lines and fed them one by one well past the stern.

The leaders were 250-pound test, and one pulled a colorful squid-like bait and the other was hooked to a hard bait maybe 6 inches long. Each trailed at or near the surface.

This was Thursday morning, and Louie wanted us to hook a marlin or big tuna or find a school of mahi-mahi. A tuna or mahi-mahi would be good in the fish box, I thought. But a big marlin might be too much for the two of us to handle.

On previous days when we hooked a fish, one of us had to reach for the rod with the screaming reel while the other wound in the second line.

This left no one to steer the boat, so Louie would kill the two big outboards. When he did, almost immediately the boat turned abeam to the wind and waves.

In that position, the boat first yawed, then pitched until one of us put it minimally under power again and regained steerage.

Accomplishing the same task while fighting a marlin and, if necessary, backing down such a big fish by reversing the boat's engines powerfully might be more excitement than the reggae music playing on the boat radio suggested we should be having.

Besides, I wanted to catch a barracuda.

"I hope we can get a barracuda for Joycelyn," I said to Louie.

Joycelyn is the cook where I am staying. She steams vegetables perfectly and spices her salads in the zestful manner of the Caribbean. She cooks meat on a coal pot and makes salsa of papaya, tomato, cilantro and lime juice.

She fries her own tortilla chips.

Joycelyn has four grown children, and each day while I fish and after the evening's cooking is well in hand, she sits in a quiet place to read her Bible.

One morning, I asked Joycelyn if she had been to the United States.

She said she had been to Miami and New York.

"And Houston," she said.

"Why Houston?" I asked.

Joycelyn said she was in church one Sunday a few years ago with her daughter and son-in-law and the congregation was praying for their son, Joycelyn's grandson.

The 1-year-old boy had cancer and was seriously ill. Everyone in the church prayed and everyone cried, Joycelyn said.

After the service, a man approached Joycelyn and her daughter and son-in-law and handed them a piece of paper with the name of a doctor on it.

"See him," the man said. "I'll take care of everything."

The man was Allen Stanford, a native Texan and longtime Antigua financier, promoter, developer and resident.

Stanford was named earlier this year by the U.S. government as the kingpin of a multibillion-dollar fraud.

Joycelyn doesn't know about that. She knows only that Stanford flew her and her family to Houston on his jet and paid for them to stay there for a year while the boy was treated.

Stanford also paid the boys' medical bills.

The treatments failed and Joycelyn's grandson died.

These days, Joycelyn tends to her children and her remaining grandchildren and cooks and reads her Bible.

Her very favorite fish to eat is barracuda.

• • •

Now Louie and I see a knot of frigate birds circling tightly off the port bow, about a half-mile upwind.

Altering our course slightly, Louie steers us in the direction of the birds.

The frigate birds are feeding on flying fish, tiny fish whose oversized pectoral fins enable them to skim above the ocean for short distances.

A flying fish was recorded once staying aloft for 45 seconds. But the fish Louie and I see are in flight only a fraction of that time as they attempt to escape predators beneath the ocean's surface, and also above.

"We'll troll through the birds," Louie said.

We approach the frigate birds, which disperse cacophonously, only to reform themselves in a swirling cloud after we pass.

The frigate birds catch some of the flying fish, and undoubtedly the pursuing fish below the surface get their share, too.

But our lures trail through the slaughterers' frenzy attracting nothing.

The question of whether this is a "fun" way to fish arises after hours of bracing ourselves in our tumbling 27-foot open boat.

Russell Chatham, the painter, once said there are as many reasons why and ways to fish as there are people who do it.

This includes deep sea trolling, which imbues among many followers a deep fanaticism.

Yet it remains true that not all forms of fishing are worthwhile to all anglers. Some want only to cast flies, some to jig for walleyes and others to watch bobbers, awaiting the nibbles of bluegills.

Similarly, some anglers consider callow the fishing-as-metaphor-for-life gambit, and want only to know "where they're biting" on a given day. These literalists see no mystery in fishing; no puzzle to solve -- or (as attractive to some) to be stumped by.

Twenty miles offshore, Louie and I angle the boat to starboard, come about slowly and quarter the waves downwind.

Reggae music fuses with the crash of waves against the boat's hull and the wind that howls through and around us.

It's then that the port rod, thick as a dowel, suddenly gains the alacrity of a bungee cord, pulsing like a metronome.

Louie kills the engines and grabs the rod while I reel in the now slack starboard line.

The boat turns quickly abeam.

Louie fights the fish a long time.

When he finally has it alongside the boat, I reach for it with a gaff, stretching my arm far into the saltwater, then out, as the boat rises and falls sharply.

"Barracuda," I say.

It is the only fish we catch.

Late in the afternoon, we quit fishing and at the house in the kitchen I give the big barracuda to Joycelyn.

She puts a knife to it, smiling.

"This," she said, "is my favorite fish."

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com