Written by Tom Allen | 30 August 2010

There's something primal about catching a fish. The tug at the end of the line seems to be connected directly to our nervous systems, triggering a jolt of adrenaline out of proportion to the size of the catch. Even a mackerel or other small fish is a nerve-jangling thrill. So imagine what it's like to catch a big fish-a really big fish. Some call it tuna fever. Dana Hole has tuna fever. A Harpswell lobsterman, Dana's been going on friends' boats since he was a teenager. This season, his second in his own boat, the 36-foot Elz Bellz, Dana harpooned one of the first swordfish landed in Harpswell in years. (Okay, a swordfish isn't a tuna, but the feeling's the same.) Let him tell you the story sometime, and you'll know he suffers from tuna fever. Dana was down on deck, when his friends in the spotting tower called down that they'd spotted another basking shark. "So I had seen nine that morning," Dana says, "and didn't need to see another one. We practically ran it over and one guy says, ' Look, its a swordfish." So Dana scrambled up into the stand and grabbed the harpoon. Now comes the embarrassing part-the part that'll get him ribbed for years. Dana says, "I came on it and I threw and I was standing on the wire. The pole died. We got on him again and I bounced the pole off his belly. I threw the third time and bounced it off his back. The fourth time I picked my spot and hit him. It's all pretty lucky," he adds. Dana credits veteran lobsterman Dain Allen for giving him hints years ago about swordfish and how they are different from tuna. "Dain said, if you throw at him and miss, don't worry, he'll be right back up," Dana says. The fish weighed 435 pounds live and dressed out at 288. Not a huge fish by weight, but it was 11 feet 4 inches long, tip to tip. Dana believes the fish hadn't had time to fatten up on the bait fish which appear so abundant this year. And it's the abundance of predator fish feeding on the bait fish that is fueling tuna fever. "Casco bay is chock-a-block full of fish," Dana says. His opinion is backed up by Peter Curtis, President of the Casco Bay Tuna Club, which organizes the annual Bailey Island Fishing Tournament (formerly the Bailey Island Tuna Tournament). "All of a sudden tuna are coming back to their old stomping grounds. It looks like the old days, with fish just banging on the bait," says Curtis. What is also unusual, he says, is how close to shore the fish are coming, just offshore, or the "edge of bottom," within sight of land. Curtis and other fishermen often steam 20 or 30 miles offshore to find tuna, which often means traveling overnight. Now the fish are within an hour's trip. Curtis believes the increase may be due to the prohibition of mid-water trawlers from an area of ocean known to fishermen as 1A. The National Marine Fisheries Service (or NMFS) closed the area of the coast last year, in an effort to protect herring stocks. Curtis believes that the closure has increased the herring stocks, which helps the entire ecosystem. "Everything feeds on herring," he says. "All of a sudden you've got lots of big fish." While his assessment makes sense on the face, a closer look shows that it may not be that simple. Jennie Bichrest of Purseline Bait and Frigid Fish, which provide lobster bait such as herring to local fishermen, is hesitant to say why there appear to be more big fish in the bay. Seiners, she points out, are still allowed to fish in area 1A, but for some reason the herring are down deep where the nets can't reach them. And the mid-water trawlers aren't banned from the entire Gulf of Maine, just from a relatively small section of it near to shore. In fact, she says there is so little herring being caught in general that she is trucking in other species from out-of-state instead. "There's no bait fish in Maine," Bichrest says. "But we're getting plenty of pogies in from New Jersey. With the limited amount that is being caught, fishermen aren't beating my doors down (for herring). They've learned to use other stuff and like it." Whatever the reason, it's a good year to rig up handlines, or restring the fighting rods, or throw the harpooning stand on the bow of the boat. The fish are ripping it up out there. And while the tuna won't necessarily give you four chances to catch them, just being near the creatures-these wild, vigorous predators-is enough to give grown men shaky hands and weak knees. You don't need to be a doctor to recognize the symptoms: tuna fever.