Tuna fish, tuna fish, sing a song of tuna fish
Tuna fish, tuna fish, it’s a favorite dish
Everybody loves it so, from New York to Kokomo
Tuna fish, tuna fish, it’s a favorite dish

(From my first piano lesson songbook)

Tomorrow we will find ourselves a seasickeningly 45 miles out in a thousand-foot ocean, seeking tuna.

Somebody explain why I’m doing this? Oh, yeah. I’m learning to love The Great Outdoors. Right.

This trip’s been in the works since May and we were supposed to go tuna-whacking in early July. Unfortunately, about a week before departure, the charter service called: The tuna weren’t hitting, so they had cancelled. We were welcome to reschedule.

Apparently, tuna fish are fickle beasts who only deign to put in an appearance when they feel REALLY peckish. The tuna off the Oregon coast seemed to be on a diet, even 60 miles out to sea. Until they developed cravings there wasn’t much point in sending out a tuna boat.

After all kinds of scrambling (this is the high-season for the coast, we’d already paid in full for the hotel, and they were more than a little reluctant to change the reservation), we rescheduled for this week.

Tuna-whacking is a bit hardcore even for deeply experienced fisherpersons like The Resident Carpenter. It’s a 12-hour trip, 3 hours going out, 3 hours going back, with a 6-hour bloodbath in the middle. Tuna stay away from shore, preferring deep water 30-plus miles out.

Translation: This is gonna take a long, long time.

Moreover, tuna are fast-moving, elusive pelargics (AKA “big honkin’ finbuddies moving a gazillion miles per hour), so they disappear even faster than they arrive. Just because they were there yesterday doesn’t mean they’ll stick around till tomorrow.

Worse, tunas are the hemophiliacs of the undersea world and when caught amply illustrate the concept, “awash with blood.” Every tuna-experienced fisherperson I’ve spoken to, including the charter service, urges us to wear blood-proof attire: Old clothes we can throw out, topped by rubber boots, rubber pants, and a rubber apron.

“Tuna blood really stinks, and once it’s in your clothes or skin,” a friend of Mom’s warned, “It won’t come out ever, not even with bleach.”

Maybe they should name the boat The Freddy Krueger…forever doomed to smell of stinky fish blood. 

“I think that if YOU go tuna fishing,” said my mother, “You will probably slip in all that blood, fall overboard, and be eaten by a shark. Nathan is a grown man and perfectly able to go fishing by himself.”

Mom’s faith in my relationship with The God of Adventure is touching, but after the last three years of Saving Elmo, can I really blame her? I stubbornly refused to consider sending Nathan off for tuna alone; we’d already paid for the trip. Besides, the whole point of the trip was getting me in touch with my inner wildernessnessness.

So we anxiously monitored the charter company’s tuna reports: If you’re risking your life for sushi, you need some sushi to show for it. Today’s report was looking good, boats averaging 1.5 tuna per fisherperson.

“I’m sure we’ll catch a lot more than that!” Nathan predicted happily.

Me–being me–nervously applied some math: Google says the average weight of  the albacore tuna, is 73 pounds. (Yup. POUNDS)

It also says tuna can weigh as much as 1,000 pounds (and how the HELL do you even get one of those in the boat without something at least as convincing as a crane?). Uhm…let’s be conservative here and stick with 73 pounds.

We are TWO fisherpeople (me and The Resident Carpenter) and we catch THREE 73-pound fish (1.5 each).

“Nathan, we are talking TWO HUNDRED AND NINETEEN POUNDS OF TUNA,” I noted, “Exactly how much tuna can you eat?”

“Well,” he said seriously, “I’ve promised tuna steaks to a lot of people.”

I hope they’re hungry. The new fishing report promises THREE tuna per fisherperson.

438 POUNDS of fish? Do we even have a cooler that big?

More on this post-trip.