88 ALBACORA 



Iquique is never gentle, never easy to understand. Even 

 the jokes that nature plays near the poor, eroded vil- 

 lage are huge and cruel. But sometimes they can be 

 devastatingly funny. 



During our expedition two years ago, I could always 

 buoy my spirits, as I sat on the small balcony waiting 

 for my injured hip to heal, by recalling the greatest 

 fishing joke nature ever played on us. It had happened 

 just one year earlier during the greatest fishing experi- 

 ence we'd ever had. The principals in this comedy were 

 Lou and Bosco, but two females had important roles, 

 too. One, of course, was me. 



Lou and I had been chasing albacora all over the 

 Humboldt throughout that previous trip, searching for 

 Bosco. We knew any number of good, big swordfish 

 swam those waters but we never landed anything that 

 even approximated the size of Bosco as we imagined 

 him. Then, one day, as our old boat, the Flying Heart, 

 cruised over a gentle sea, we spotted huge dorsal fins. 



"Bosco!" Lou bellowed at once. 



Everyone aboard jumped into action, and baiting be- 

 gan before the sound of Lou's shout had faded. Lou 

 pulled the line off the big Fin-Nor reel and stood hold- 

 ing the end of the big, trailing loop in his hand. We 

 waited, breathless. That huge dorsal fin looked like the 

 mainsail of a windjammer. Eddie Wall, veteran of many 

 swordfish safaris, was our captain that year. With a 

 wonderful display of skillful manipulation of boat and 



