Articles

Picture yourself hooking into a grander blue marlin off the coast of some exotic island. You’re in for the fight of your life, but halfway through the battle you decide to take a dunk overboard to get a better view of the magnificent creature’s anatomy. Once the scene is recorded onto tape for the television show you produce and seared into your memory as a basis for your artwork, you surface, continue to help leader the fish, and ultimately tag and release it.

Back on land, you recall your intrepid encounter and begin expertly painting new designs that will eventually end up as T-shirts on the backs of thousands of your fans, hang proudly as fine art pieces in their offices and homes, and even be published in a book you’re writing that will someday be honored by a foreign government.

But you don’t have time to ponder future achievements. You must immediately begin using your Ph.D. skill set to track the satellite tag on your marlin with the help of world-renowned marine scientists who collaborate with your nonprofit organization. This data will help shape the future of the oceans’ great pelagic species and provide countless joys to a new generation of responsible anglers. Oh, and you’re also very lucky: there are two giant marlin you’ll need to track because you hooked and released a second grander later that same afternoon.

Sound like fiction? Welcome to the wonderful, very real world of Guy Harvey. While Guy might not complete all of those amazing feats in a single day, these are true-to-life events experienced by this extraordinary artist, biologist, author, photographer, documentarian, conservationist, and savvy businessman.

Inducted into the IGFA Hall of Fame in 2009, Guy Harvey has built a vertically integrated oceanic-inspired empire through good old-fashioned hard work, passion, and uncanny vision. His deal making with like-minded individuals and companies has created a synergy that we all benefit from.

Pacific Coast Sportfishing was fortunate enough to snag some time with this affable tenth-generation Jamaican and learn more about the man behind the instantly recognizable signature.

PCS:  Where to begin with someone who has such a rich history in the world of fishing…Do you remember the first fish you ever drew or painted?

Harvey:  I honestly don’t, but I’m looking at some old sketches I did some time ago and it’s a good mixture of game fish; Wahoos, Tunas, Barracudas, Sharks, and Billfish, of course. That whole early experience of fishing with my parents in Jamaica was always positive.

PCS:  Speaking of your homeland, being a 10^th generation Jamaican (of English descent) must have special importance in your life. What was your favorite part of growing up on the Island?

Harvey:  I think being so close to all the wonderful natural things that Jamaica has to offer. It’s a very beautiful country with lots of mountains and great forests and all kinds of different climates. It’s a bit like the big island of Hawaii, actually, and I was always impressed with the birdlife, the farm animals, and the fishing was just an extra bonus.

PCS:  So did you do a lot of fishing with your parents as a youngster?

Harvey: Yes, both my parents were very keen anglers, of course my dad a bit more than my mom, but they fished tournaments, Billfish stuff, lots of river fishing. It was just a great time and place to be a kid.

PCS:  In 1985 you depicted “The Old Man & The Sea” through 44 incredible pen and ink drawings and exhibited them in Jamaica.  Did you ever think you could take your artistic talents, and not only make a living, but also create a full-blown empire from your marine inspired art?

Harvey: Obviously, I didn’t know the full extent. I knew there was inherent talent. A lot of other family members were very accomplished artists. I sold a few pieces here and there for a few dollars—maybe $15 to $20. Of course, in those days it was a lot of money. I didn’t really appreciate the opportunity until Americans began fishing Jamaica in the tournaments in the mid 1980s. I would have these informal expeditions at the tournaments and I would often sell out of the pieces. Once I came to the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show in 1986, I realized that here was an opportunity because there just wasn’t much of that genre readily available to people.

PCS:  So when and how did your artwork end up on being printed on t-shirts?

Harvey:  In 1986 I had signed a contract with T-shirts of Florida, which was then owned by Raleigh Werking, who is a good friend of Bill DePriest Sr., and he ran the company for a couple of years and got me going with the T-shirt deal, which was an instant success. There had been nothing else like it available in the market and, unfortunately, he sold the company in 1989 to his partner. And his partner continued to run the company and we had a license for another fifteen years before AFTCO came along.

PCS: How did you transition to doing business with AFTCO?

Harvey: While T-Shirts of Florida did a good job, we realized we could have expanded the line away from just T-shirts and more into sportswear. AFTCO came along in the early 2000s, and it was Milt Shedd, Bill Shedd’s dad, who came to me and said, ‘We’ve got the Bluewater Line going quite well, but something is missing. We need to include some really good art. How about a licensing program whereby you do some artwork for us?’ At the time, I was still married to T-shirts of Florida so I couldn’t do anything in the T-shirt line, but we did find a way to do some of the Hawaiian-style, all-over prints on shirts. That was early 2002, and the contract with TSF expired in 2004. Realizing what a great job AFTCO was doing in terms of the manufacturing side of it, but more importantly the marketing side of it, I saw them as a much better option. In 2004, I did fifty brand-new designs for AFTCO just so they could start with a fresh palette, so to speak, and off we went. In two years, AFTCO tripled our business, and in 2011 we’re a major brand and doing very well. The thing about AFTCO is that they are a very like-minded company to my company in terms of their whole business philosophy and the involvement of conservation efforts.

Have you ever had a 150-pound tuna chased to the surface by a 600-pound blue marlin? Hounded so hard that the tuna leaped from the water like a billfish – not once, but three times? To tell you the truth, I’d never seen that – before my last trip to Panama in December. I know people have had small tuna eaten off the hook by marlin, but a 150-pounder? This marlin’s eyes were much larger than its mouth. I don’t even think a 600-pound marlin could eat a 150-pound tuna; a grander, but not a 600-pounder. Seems every trip I take to Tropic Star Lodge, something really special happens.

A happy-go-lucky boatload of people may instantly have their smiles turned upside down when they pull up to a bait receiver in the morning and see the dreaded “Closed” sign hung out. Live bait may not be absolutely necessary – Gulp bait and Powerbait out-produce it sometimes – but most of us feel that live bait sure does add to our fish-hunting arsenal. When it happens to me, I know that today just got tougher because my options are limited. Sure, it is possible to jig up a barely sufficient supply of ’dines or small mackies near most harbor mouths, but we sure feel properly prepared heading out with a full tank of well-cured bait from the bait receiver.

Time is quickly slipping away, the angler knows, and he can definitely feel the pressure of it passing. Undaunted, he sends his lure skipping across the water’s surface toward a particularly difficult target. Although the piling is only a few yards away, he needs to wedge the lure into a narrow gap between a dock and its moored boat while keeping it low enough to pass under the mooring lines. The lure skips one last time, inches from the piling, before sliding into the water. Like a crab that has lost its footing, it sinks slowly to the bottom.

Looking out the galley window, I spotted a navy-blue steel troller making a slow turn and heading down swell at approximately four knots. Two guys in orange slickers were pulling lines in hand over hand and rapidly pitching school-size albacore up over the gunwale and into a holding bin. On about their sixth fish, I heard two clickers go off in the stern of our boat, a jig strike, and some of our anglers went scrambling to the bait tank while another crewmember brailed a scoop of live anchovies into the prop wash.

With increased public aware- ness of the need for sustain- able fisheries, more anglers are turning to catch-and-release fishing as a means to satisfying their desire for fishing as well as doing their part to conserve local stocks. Typically, an angler opts to re-lease a fish to fight another day. That the retention of a particular species violates a fishery management regulation could be another motivating factor. Such regulations include seasonal catch restrictions, size limits, and bag limits imposed by state and federal fishery management agencies. Catch regulations that require the release of certain individuals are based on the assumption that fish survive capture and subsequent handling; however, the effectiveness of these regulations depends on post-release survival rates.

The first time I fished a ballyhoo was during a routine trip to North Carolina, chasing giant bluefin. I was standing on the back of a 45-footer in 15-foot seas and 26-degree weather (though it felt like two degrees), lightning striking around the boat, and a big old southern boy yelling, “Get you some, boy!” while we took green water over the bow and stern at the same time. Yep, that was my first time fishing that crazy billed “East Coast” bait known as the ballyhoo. The boys rigged them up with 250-pound fluorocarbon and a large long-shank J-hook and an Islander over the head.

It was just a short run out of the harbor after the shotgun start. Keith O’Brian, better known as “O.B.” set out the spread of polished handmade Hawaiian marlin lures. The shimmer off of the gold Penn 130s is just enough to make you turn away as you daydream about giant blue marlin while staring at the glassy, gin-clear, purple water. It didn’t take long for the long corner to explode. It was then that I knew we had the Kona blues.

New Legislation Proposed in California

Forage is the heartbeat of the ocean, the life-giving sustenance that keeps the thousands of species of large food and sport fish alive and robust. Nothing, no other category of fish, determines the fate of our favorite seafood as much as the availability of sufficient forage to keep them healthy and reproductive. Forage fish are the transfer agents. They convert the microscopic phytoplankton and zooplankton into usable protein, protein that the entire upper oceanic food chain depends upon.