A Crew Of One -- The Odyssey of a Solo Marlin Fisherman

Carlos and Caribena fighting the big Blue Marlin
photo by Dave Sherman on his "Miss Allied"

A Sea Going Love Affair
Book tells of a bond between man, boat, fishing.

Caribena and I have made a nice couple. For better or worse: on sickening days of high winds and furious seas or on windless days of gently rolling waves; on successful fishing days when we catch and release billfish; or on those days when we got skunked.

Caribena, of course, is not a wife or a real live lady friend. She's a boat - and not a young, sleek one that turns heads at the docks - but she and the author have been through a lot together.

The recounting of their love affair is the real story of a bond. A bond between not just man and boat, or man and fish, or even man and the sea.

It's also a saga of a bond between man and himself. And anyone who fishes more for the experience of just being there than for the catch - or the accolades due after a great fight - will find "A Crew of One: The Odyssey of a Solo Fisherman" one of the best reads ever between the covers of a book on man's chase of either fish or wildlife. The fisherman of "A Crew of One" openly and unabashedly searches his soul as he rides the waves aboard his beloved Caribena on his beloved Atlantic in quest of his beloved white marlin - and in doing so reminds us of why we really join in the chase for rockfish, bass, sea trout, billfish, giant tuna or even crappie with a cane pole.

The reader, or at least this reader, is obligated to pause time and again and say to himself "that's how I feel, but I've never been able to put it into words." Or perhaps, chooses not to try to say them for fear that other would not fully understand the fascination of fishing. Former Annapolitan Carlos Bentos says it for us, and eloquently. The reader feels warm inside.

Yet, this is just not a book about the gregarious and affable Bentos, pushing 60 and who prefers to, and almost always does, fish single-handed, it is also about how to ride stormy seas in a boat most, but not the author, would think too small to bounce on an angry Atlantic 60 or more miles offshore. And, also is a volume full as a fishbox of information on tackle and techniques for challenging bluewater fish.

In addition, the author takes us inside the minds of fish, tuna, white marlin and yes, blue marlin, as deeply as he does himself within his own fertile mind. Much can be learned by a big game fisherman reader as Carlos reminds us so many times of why a fish will do this or that as we try to outwit it - and what we might try when a fish does this or that if we are to set the hook, reel it in. And of course, release it in hopes for a return encounter another day.

It's all done in a low key fashion; it isn't "you've gotta do it this or that way." Instead, Carlos takes us through his mind and his drawing on experiences, past and present, as he plots his maneuvers when fish are reluctant to oblige. He has come to know the scrappy tail-walking white marlin as well as he has his Caribena, a Bertram 35, that is more than 20 years old, but not showing her age.

He has been at her wheel on either the fly bridge or in the cockpit for 18 years; when trolling he is topside where he can study the sea for signs of fish while feeling the salty breeze, but in much of the fight he's at the controls on the deck where the appropriate climax the fight takes place.

He's captain, mate, fisherman, and often times photographer of the Caribena - and he tells of some days when anyone else would have been welcome aboard as either ocean or fish kicked up too much of a fuss for a man to handle alone.

It isn't that he doesn't enjoy company - he started offshore fishing alone because there was no one else to go with him. He's in the restaurant business, his latest endeavor is the Fathom Grille at West Ocean City (where else?), he meets many people, shakes a lot of hands, does a lot of chitchat, and then he's ready for 12 to 14 hours or more alone. On the ocean.

Through he usually fishes alone, his accomplishments are those of a full fishing team, like in 1996 when just he and Caribena won the 23rd Annual White Marlin Open at Ocean City. HE didn't enter any of the side pools - too bad because he'd have won close to a half million bucks - but he says that's not what fishing, to him, is all about. Before the big bucks where passed out to cap that tournament's awards get together, he had already claimed Captain of the Year, Mate of the Year, Fisherman of the Year, and Caribena was Boat of the Year. Had there been recognition for photographer of the year, he'd have won that. He was also busy taking videos of his fish to satisfy those who might have thought that no one man and a small boat could beat a fleet of 237 boats with full crews aboard.

Incidentally, four of his fish in the White Marlin Open were double headers - as if a single billfish isn't challenging enough for a one man crew. Think of trying to keep lines separate when skipping atop the sea there are two marlin that can go in any direction without a moments notice. And to handle the boat at the same time, not to mention bringing both to the gunwale or stern, and releasing them, something that traditionally requires both mate and angler. Also consider, he tagged four of those fish before release.

There have been other tournament victories for Carlos, past president of the Ocean City (Light Tackle) Marlin Club, but he likes to think of the pair of blue marlin he caught - one at Baltimore Canyon, the other at Washington Canyon - that both were estimated at 700 pounds. No one to share the experience with but the fish and Caribena. But he admits talking with them, also his late mother, his tutor and fishing companion in the chase for drum as a boy in his native Uruguay.

Carlos is methodical in his fishing. He favors light line, often using 20 pound test in the ocean, where there is no margin for error.

I've fished with him, and noted no line goes in the water until everything is perfect. When we fished the bay, he tied a Bimini knot to join 10 - pound test line and leader - the only Bimini I've seen tied on the Chesapeake where swivels are the accepted connection. Why, 49 of 50 bay fishermen can't even tie one, never mind using one. Before he moved from Chesapeake Harbor hereabouts within the past year, there were springtime and fall junkets on the bay for rockfish, only four lines to the boat as when he fishes the ocean. It only takes one to hook a rockfish - or a billfish.

The bay, he likes but it isn't endless like the ocean, nor does it have the big bluewater fish - and in the Chesapeake there are too many boats. How can a man peace with himself when he has to be constantly traffic vigilant? In fishing he likes to be the lone wolf, and hereabouts, the Atlantic is his only option though it often means a departure from the docks well before 5 am and the sun sinking below the horizon dead ahead on the trip home.

About the ocean, he writes "Where else is life so insistently reduced to its private elements? Where else can I sense so intently the basic nature of my own needs?

"This aspect of fishing is a physical and spiritual need. I need it like I need air to breathe. In solitude, I find my way and gain strength. I get in touch with myself. In shore, I try to share what I have learned in this book." Having read the book, I believe Carlos has been very generous in his sharing.

"A Crew of One," published by J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. in Hardcover, is available at most bookstores and costs $23.95.

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On Hemingway's 100th Birthday, This Tale is about a Middle-Aged Man and the Sea

We sat on the flying bridge of Carlos Bentos' 35-foot Bertram, Caribena, last week gazing back at the brilliant blue of the Gulf Stream swirling in the prop wash and at trolled baits skipping along in the sunlight. Everything changed in an instant.

Bentos said nothing but his eyes narrowed. Suddenly he was gone. You wouldn't think a 58-year-old could moved so fast. He shot down the ladder to the cockpit, barely touching the steps, yanked a rod from its holder, poised thumb over reel and stared intently at a tableau unfolding 75 yards back, visible only to him.

It was man vs. fish and no room for error. A big one had whacked one of the ballyhoo baits, knocked the line from the outrigger. Now the wounded bait, under Bentos' deft control, wobbled in the bright clear water, sinking like some stunned, shiny morsel toward the sandy bottom 300 feet below, while the fish that whacked it circled for the kill.

Bentos felt the pickup and lifted thumb from reel. Line spun off as the fish made its run, bait tucked in its jaw. "There is a moment in the run," he explained, "when a fish turns the bait so it aimed directly down its gullet and opens wide to swallow. That's when you strike."

"A fish has no tongue you see," said the veteran angler, winner of so many billfish tournaments he no longer has room at home to display all the trophies. "So he positions the bait and uses the force of the water to push it down its throat.

That was the instant Bentos had to sense by the tiny vibrations, bumps and speed changes in hundreds of feet of monofilament line stretched through moving water. He felt it, snapped the reel out of free-spool and struck.

Bang! Bang! Bang! He jerked firmly on the rod three times to set the steel hook, sharpened to a razor point. Bentos felt the weight of a serious fish and turned to beckon me down. I flew down the ladder just as he jammed the butt of the rod into the fighting belt I'd strapped on. "What is it?" I asked.

Almost as the words left his mouth he had the answer. Far astern, the sleek tropical-hued shaped of a billfish broke the surface of the sea and shook in fury, the first of a dozen spectacular jumps. It was a big one. Line shook, spray flew but the hook held.

All this was on the very day we celebrated the 100th Anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's birth, and it made sense to celebrate with a bigger-than-life, Hemingwayesque figure like Bentos--writer, singer, translator, restaurateur and big-game angler of historic proportions.

Papa's 100th Birthday Well Spent With Angler Of 'Historic Proportions' and Hemingwayesque Aura

It was Bentos who in 1996 won the prestigious Ocean City White Marlin Open by boating five White Marlin in three days--all by himself. He fishes alone, like Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea," while rivals take a mate, captain, and crew. As a result, when Bentos won, he single-handedly took every category -- top captain, top mate, top angler, top boat--the only time it's ever happened and probably the only time it ever will, unless he does it again.

In three years since, Bentos has retired from the business that brought him prominence in the Washington area, selling his popular restaurants called El Caribe. But he's kept busy typing in his Annapolis bachelor apartment, completing a wonderfully musical book about he seagoing exploits called "A Crew of One," which he expects to publish this year.

The book is in English. He also is well along on a book of poems about the sea in his native Spanish.

"Poems I cannot write in English," he says. Meanwhile, he's completed a course and passed the test to become a licensed charter fishing captain, while continuing to work a day or two a week voicing narratives for the Voice of America.

And he sings in Spanish--grandly and operatically--from the bridge of Caribeña whenever the spirit moves him.

Bentos moved to Washington 30 years ago from his native Uruguay to work for VOA. He discovered billfishing on a trip to the Outer Banks and has been at it ever since. He's a stalwart of the Ocean City Light Tackle Club and the Ocean City Marlin Club. He's caught hundreds of white marlin and scores of blue marlin over the years, but the thrill has never been diminished.

He stood at my shoulder coaching as I fought the white last week--the only billfish of the day and the first of the season for Bentos. It's a good omen in advance of this year's White Marlin Open, which runs next week out of Ocean City with Bentos once again signed up on as the only single-handed entry.

He coached me through the leaps and runs of the glorious gamefish and laughed when I rubbed my forearms, grown weary from the pumping and reeling. It was a pleasure to have him at the engine controls, backing the boat down to gain line when the marlin took a rest, nudging left to right when the fish overtook us to one side or the other. Suddenly, after 10 minutes or so, it was over. "There is the leader," Bentos said.

I cranked hard one last time to get leader past the rod tip. He seized it, took two careful wraps of the leader around his left hand and lifted. The sword-like bill broke the surface first, followed by a bright, nervous eye, then the great, colorful form of the king of the open sea.

We carefully released the marlin and watched it roll, sweep its tail and shoot away. It was, Bentos reckoned, one of the biggest whites he'd ever boated, 75 pounds or so, probably a big money winner if it had come a few days later in the White Marlin Open.

"Congratulations!" Bentos said, extending a hand. And at that moment, with his gray beard creased by a happy grin, eyes alight, hands slick from the great fish, and the Gulf Stream's gin-clear waters rolling by, 60 miles out in the wild Atlantic, I might as easily have been shaking hands with the century-old Papa himself.

A Great Battle With Blue Marlin Ends in Disappointment
Washington Post , Angus Phillips, Sunday, August 31, 2003, Page E10
© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Days are growing shorter, the cicadas louder, dove season opens Monday and autumn's in the air. What sort of summer ends without an adventure story from Capt. Carlos Bentos, our fearless singlehanded marlin fisherman?

Bentos, 62, an Uruguayan expatriate who used to own and run restaurants called El Caribe around Washington, has moved to this seaside enclave to pursue his passion, billfishing alone in the Gulf Stream 80 miles offshore in his 22-year-old, 35-foot Bertram sportfisher, Caribeña.

He's won acclaim in the local angling community for his success catching elusive white marlin. Whites generally run 40 to 80 pounds, and while it's an astonishing feat to hook and bring one to the boat all by yourself, fellow anglers have come to accept Bentos's achievements. But many wondered what he would do if he tied into the white marlin's heavier kin, a really big blue marlin.

They got the answer this month in the 30th annual White Marlin Open. After an exhausting, exhilarating, 9¼-hour fight, largely witnessed by fellow anglers on the 64-foot Miss Allied which hovered nearby, Bentos lost the fish of his lifetime, a blue marlin he estimated at 800 pounds, just 15 feet from the boat when a knot gave way.

Bentos had brought the weary fish within a few feet of his flying gaff a half-dozen times over the long day, but each time it pulled away before he could sink the sharp point. "I'm a 200-pound guy against an 800-pound guy," he said. "I couldn't pull him the extra three or four feet to get close enough to gaff him."

The hookup came at 8:45 a.m. when the blue inhaled a trolled Spanish mackerel minutes after Bentos set out his baits at Poor Man's Canyon on the tournament's last day. By 6 p.m., Caribeña was 80 miles offshore, having been dragged by the fish 13 miles southeast through choppy seas. Bentos calculated options. "It was a four-hour run home, and I knew from experience it would take two hours to get the fish aboard if I could subdue him. Final tournament check-in time was 12:15. It was now or never."

As Bentos tells it, eyes alight, hands in motion: "I try one more time to lift him. I set the reel on 50-pound drag, the maximum, and reel up to the end of the leader," bringing the fish just 16 feet away. Bentos demonstrates how he then bent at the waist and wrapped the 400-pound-test wire leader once around his gloved hand.

"I pull up, he pulls down. Then the leader starts to slip past my hand [as the fish pulls away]. The swivel goes by, inflicting pain, and as I hold the 130-pound-test Dacron leader, the traumatized knot at the swivel, unlike the fish and myself, gives up.

"The fish with a kick of its tail swims off to the depths, and I stand with the broken line in my hand, an emptiness inside."

A coarser man might mention that it was an expensive loss. The tournament winner in the blue marlin category weighed just 485 pounds but was worth a staggering $561,121 to angler James Adams of Wake Forest, N.C., and the captain and crew of the Reel Deal. (Top white marlin, a 78½-pounder, earned a record $1.3 million for Doug Remsberg of Walkersville, Md., and the crew of the local charter boat Fish Bonz.) But the lost jackpot appears to mean little to the white-bearded Bentos, who lives comfortably these days in a duplex at Harbor Island Marina, tournament headquarters, his boat nestled a few miles away alongside most of the billfishing fleet at Sunset Marina in West Ocean City.

He just likes telling his story, the basics of which were confirmed by Dave Sherman of Bethesda, owner of Miss Allied, who was close by when Bentos hooked up and stayed alongside till 3:30, when tournament anglers not fighting a fish were required to pick up lines.

Sherman photographed Caribeña being towed backward by the big blue and saw "plenty of splashes" from its jumps, though he concedes he never got close enough to see the fish well enough to accurately judge its size.

Bentos says he was plenty close enough to guess its weight -- sometimes too close. Forty-five minutes into the fight, he said, he was at the transom, having backed the boat within 50 feet or so of the fish, "When suddenly this immense figure leaps into the air, 25 feet from the starboard side, jumping toward the boat, forcing me to spin with the engines to avoid him crashing into the boat."

Bentos said the blue "looked like a five-seat sofa catapulted from the depths of the ocean." He said he'd caught dozens of blue marlin over the years and seen hundreds brought back to docks at various fishing centers by triumphant anglers, "but never one this big."

Oddly, the fish from that point was always close at hand. After a few early runs of 300 to 400 feet and plenty of jumping, the marlin rarely strayed more than 30 feet from the boat. "It was a tug of war, a war of wills," said Bentos, who has no fighting chair, preferring to fight billfish standing up while running the boat from controls mounted in the cockpit.

By mid-afternoon, he said, "I realized the fish will not come up. I had to pull him." So he increased the drag on his 50-pound-test outfit and began to tug and strain. "It was like lifting a piano, but this piano can swim and has mobility. I don't possess that kind of strength. No human being does."

In the end, it came to naught. At 6:30, empty-handed, Bentos struck a course for home into a thickening fog that by the time he found Ocean City inlet obscured even the bow of his boat. "I had to idle around trying to find the entrance to Sunset Marina," he said, but when he found his slip dock, a small band of 20 or 25 friends and admirers was on hand, clapping a welcome.

At his age, Bentos says he's mellowed enough to take the loss in stride. In any event, he expects to meet the fish again. "In 1994, in very similar circumstances, I lost a 600- to 700-pound blue," he said. He fought that fish for seven hours in the same tournament, in nearby waters. "I wonder if it's the same fish," he mused.

"The first time, I felt a mixture of emotions," he said. "I was distraught, sad, but relieved that the fish, in a noble fight, won. This time I felt the same, but with anticipation for encounter number three.

"It's a three-round fight," he said with a gleam in his eyes, "and I am eager to reclaim my two lost hooks."

Author Bentos: "Solitary Man" without Equal
Maryland Beachcomber, John Bozman, July 5, 2002

He uses it casually, but with such warmth and romance-language inflection as to leave no doubt about the intended, deeper message.

In the simplest of terms, the 61-year-old Bentos is fisherman, restaurateur, newsman, traveler, conservationist, philosopher, educator.

"A man of many hats," is surely an accurate descriptor, albeit an understatement of considerable magnitude when it comes to the individual. Maybe the best way to learn more about Carlos Bentos is not to read words written about him, but to read words written by him.

Bentos' book, "A Crew of One," affords an excellent opportunity to learn more about the man, about life, about one's self, about something called marlin fishing.

In a 1992 review of the movie "A River Runs Through It," film critic Roger Ebert wrote:

"Fly-fishing stands for life in this movie. If you can learn to do it correctly, to read the river and the fish and yourself, and to do what needs to be done without one wasted motion, you will have attained some of the grace and economy needed to live a good life.

"If you can do it and understand that the river, the fish and the whole world are God's gifts to use wisely, you will have gone the rest of the way."

Carlos Bentos sees life in just such a fashion. Better, he lives it that way. "A Crew of One: The Odyssey of a Solo Marlin Fisherman," debuted in May and has since received its own considerable acclaim, along the lines of what Ebert wrote about the film and the book that was the basis for that movie. Knowledgeable critics are already favorably comparing Bentos' story, style and substance to author Norman Maclean.

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. ... Our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others.

"He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry fly fisherman."

Today, some reviewers are also heralding "A Crew of One" as the modern-day equivalent of Ernest Hemingway's novel "The Old Man and the Sea," published in 1952; the last book "Papa" wrote before taking his own life in 1961.

Hemingway's classic - also later the foundation for a movie starring Spencer Tracy - is the story of an epic struggle between an old man, Santiago, and one particular marlin. This weary, solitary Cuban fisherman goes 84 days without catching a fish. Fishing is literally his livelihood, his means of survival.

Hemingway's tale tells of the day Santiago ventures out to sea much farther than usual. If he goes into deeper waters, he will catch a fish, Santiago believes. He does.

To merely say Bentos is a solo fisherman who ventures as far as 100 miles offshore in his quest for the great billfish would likewise provide merely a snapshot - of the author and his book.

An impressive ring with a ocean-blue stone on his left hand does, however, provide a clue as to the prowess of Bentos, the fisherman.

So does an article published in Marlin magazine a few years ago titled "Amazing Angling Feats."

"Most outstanding solo tournament feat," described Bentos' efforts in the 1996 White Marlin Open in Ocean City.

Later, in 1999, Bentos' friend J. Joseph Barse of Bethesda, Md., wrote, "We are both members of one of the oldest fishing clubs in the country, the Ocean City Light Tackle Club.

"The Club just celebrated its 50th year in 1997, and it published a 300-page book covering the Club's history and members' experiences over the years.

One of the many photographs in our book is of a blue marlin and was taken by Bentos on his boat, Caribena, when he was not only the captain, mate and angler, but also the tagger and photographer."

"He (Bentos) released more white marlin than any other angler among the more than 1,200 anglers participating. His boat released more white marlin than any of the other boats (237 total) in the tournament. For this, he received awards from the Marlin Club for grand champion angler, captain of the year, mate of the year and top boat.

Bentos, relaxing recently on the upper deck of Fathoms Grill, said his work on that 300-page history of the Marlin Club was partial inspiration for "A Crew of One," a work of a mere 203 pages that concludes:

"I do love my solitude. I also enjoy spending time with whomever crosses my path, and sometimes, on my solo overnights, I wish that those I love - my daughter among them - were with me as I gaze up at the heavens.

"Part autobiography, part 'Old Man and the Sea,' Bentos' memoir is written primarily for aficionados of sportfishing... Readers will also pick up some of the ideology of sportfishing: the catch-and-release philosophy, the strategy of competition, the lessons to be learned out there all alone on the big blue sea.

"A fine fishing story, yes, but also a resonant autobiography capable of reeling in a wide variety of readers."

Born Feb. 2, 1941, in Montevideo, Uruguay, Bentos now lives just outside Ocean City, in Berlin, and his 20-year old, 35-foot Bertram, the Caribena ("Caribbean girl"), now has "West Ocean City" lettered on the stern to identify its latest home port.

"It was my mother, not my father, who taught me how to fish," he said with noticeable special emphasis and a slight accent.

Not surprisingly, the book's dedication reads, "To my mother, Margarita Yolanda."

Bentos drives a classic mid- to late-1980s 560 SL Mercedes-Benz coupe, blue in color, that's beginning to show its age.

An oft-repeated Bentos line of a different sort goes, "Sadly, my car and my boat have outlasted my marriages."

In addition to writing style, subject matter and physical appearance, Bentos and Hemingway also have failed multiple marriages in common. Both parted company with their spouses in an amicable fashion.

But Bentos, unlike Papa, appears to be at peace with himself, loving life, the people who pass through it and, of course, the great hunt for the magnificent billfish.

"Before the mate could say more, the captain on the bridge noticed what was going on. With unthinking eloquence, he updated the mate, shouting in grammatically perfect patois:

"'Lock it up! Lock it up!" thundered down the voice from the bridge. 'Lock up the reel!' shouted the captain, a clear command to the angler-to-be and a heated response to the question asked by the mate."

In describing some of his considerable restaurant experience, Bentos wrote: "If, twenty years before, the map of my life had a path leading to my future restaurants, I did not notice it - not until I was standing in front of a fork in the road.

"One road of this bifurcation was well known, paved with security and easy to stroll, but it seemed to me rather plain.

"The other branch, behind the neon and glamour, hinted a mix of hard work and rewards at the end of what I was told could be rougher than a roller-coaster ride.

Following 25 years of owning and running five renowned restaurants in the Georgetown section of Washington, he became a partner and general manager of the upscale Fathoms Grill at the Sunset Marina in West Ocean City. Bentos recently motioned to an interviewer and said, "Here, sit here. You will be more comfortable, amigo."

There was no difference in the seating, save for one soon-to-be-apparent difference, the broadly smiling author would be facing a wall, so as not to be distracted - or tempted to intervene - as the Fathoms staff began preparing for its influx of noonday customers.

His is obviously a man of focus, one whose solitary time at sea is not strictly devoted to his passion for sportfishing.

Former Restaurateur Makes Solo Billfishing Look Easy
Washington Post, Angus Phillips, June 30, 2002

The White Marlin Open, this seaside town's signature entry in the world of big-game fishing tournaments, opens Aug. 5 this year, with hundreds of thousands of dollars and mountains of prestige on the line.

Somewhere in the mix of 350-odd gleaming offshore boats and their tanned captains and crews will be white bearded Carlos Bentos, a legend in the event since 1996, when he walked off with four of the most coveted prizes.

It's not the fact that he did so well that year that makes him a legend but how he did it, He is the world's only known single-handed offshore billfisherman. The five white marlin he caught and released in three days of fishing that year were his work and his alone. As a result, he won trophies as Grand Champion Angler, Captain of the Year and Mate of the Year, and his aging 35-foot Bertram, Caribena, won Top Boat.

It was a stunning achievement, considering that hundreds of rivals were in bigger, newer, faster boats with professional skippers and mates to do the grunt work of rigging baits, running the boat and finding the fish. Now Bentos, who for years owned and operated a string of restaurants around Washington call El Caribe, has donned another cap and will be promoting his new book, "A Crew of One" ($23.95; Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, New York), to the assembled anglers. If they're smart they'll grab it, because he tells all.

He always has, if anyone would listen. Unlike most fisherman, Bentos, 61, does not keep secrets and doesn't tell lies. "If friends or charter captains want to know, I will tell them where I'm catching fish," he writes. "I'm sure some guys fishing the (offshore) canyons out of Ocean City might think that by doing that I'm from another planet." He also will tell whoever asks (or buys the book) how he rigs his ballyhoo baits, how he trolls then and how he sets the hook, the trickiest of the billfish skills. He'll even tell how he successfully fights two marlin at once, as he's done many times while simultaneously running the boat and even reporting the fight via marine radio while it's still in progress.

These days almost everyone believes Bentos' remarkable tales, but it wasn't always so. When he first started fishing out of Ocean City in the mid-1980's, skepticism ran rampant.

It's a tricky business, flying flags that state you've caught and released the most sought-after fish in the sea as you return to the dock after being out alone, with no one to verify the claim.

It wasn't until Bentos entered some tournaments that required boats to carry observers that the fishing world began to take him for real, he said. In 1989 he shocked his buddies in the Ocean City Light Tackle Club by reporting the catch and release of five white in one day, but they stopped doubting a few weeks later when he was asked to stand in on another boat and caught and released six, with witnesses to verify it.

It was a costly triumph because in so doing he knocked himself out of first place in the running for an annual trophy for the most billfish caught in one day. To ease the pain, he writes, a new trophy for Outstanding Sportsmanship was created and awarded to him. "I felt like one of the boys, fully accepted into the fraternity." I, for one, don't doubt Bentos' claims. I have fished with him offshore several times, watched him hook and release white marlin, have seen and admired the way he runs the boat from the cockpit with one hand while fighting a fish with the other, and have seen the tidy, efficient arrangement of five baits he trolls to lure in billfish and the care with which he rigs up while Caribena cleaves the sea under the guidance of its autopilot.

Indeed, he makes solo billfishing look so simple. I'm afraid I stirred his wrath last week by suggesting that what he does might not be so remarkable, after all. When I suggested others might be able to successfully fish alone for mighty marlin 60 or 80 miles offshore, he bristled.

Rule one of offshore fishing - or anything else you do out in the ocean blue - is never argue with the captain when you're out of sight of land. Since we were 50 mile from Ocean City Inlet at the time, I dropped the dispute.

Certainly what Bentos did in pioneering single-handed big-game fishing is a stunning achievement, though it was for quite basic, practical reasons: As a restaurateur, his days off were usually Monday and Tuesday and it was hard to find anyone to go those days. When he did find someone, seasickness often struck and he had to cut the trip short, a harsh sacrifice when you've motored three hours to get to the fishing grounds.

It's a fine book, lyrical and poetic, written in the rich voice of this transplanted Uruguayan, whose love affair with fishing dates from his childhood on the Rio de la Plata outside Montevideo, where he angled for black drum with his mother.

Bentos takes us from his shore bound origins out to sea alone in wild storms and in glorious calms, shows us glorious dusk and dawn on the azure Gulf Stream and takes us fishing all night, with billion stars glimmering. He writes with passionate clarity on the intricacies of a marlin's strike, and how tricky the hook set is.

Bentos has the courage to compare himself in print to Hemingway's "Old man of the Sea," and somehow it doesn't seem a stretch.

I asked him if he ever was afraid, searching alone for powerful fish so far from shore. "I guess I am a fatalist, " he said with a laugh, then related an Uruguayan parable about a young man plucked away by death even after donning a lavish disguise to trick the Grim Reaper. "When it's your time, that's it."

One of a Kind
A Contest Of Equals
The Daily Times, Mary Bargion, June 28, 2002

Ocean City fisherman Carlos Bentos tells of his one-man battles with marlin in new book.

He looks like Ernest Hemingway, but he fishes like Santiago, the author's protagonist in the epic tale "The Old Man and the Sea."

The deep-sea fisherman has written a book about this experiences in the gin-clear waters of the Atlantic Gulf Stream. 100 miles off the coast of Ocean City, where marlin and tuna run about.

"A Crew of One," published by Penguin/Putman, is the story of his life, first as a small boy in Montevideo, Uruguay, learning the art of fishing from his mother and self-discipline from the Catholic brothers of El Sagrado Corazon.

In the late 1960's, he came to the United States to apply his deep resonant voice to the airwaves of Voice of America and the Mutual Broadcast System. Bentos kept in touch with his native culture by opening several Latin American- themed restaurants in the Washington, DC area.

"I was sitting in an armchair in Virginia in 1970, leafing through a fishing magazine," said Bentos, a partner and general manager of Fathoms Grille in West Ocean City.

"I saw a photo of an impressive marlin that dwarfed the man next to it. The guy holding the rod was wearing a huge smile of triumph.

Bentos wowed visitors in 1996 by walking away with a collection of awards for top billfisherman at the prestigious White Marlin Open in Ocean City.

He was both captain and mate of the year, grand champion angler and won top boat in the 237-boat fleet at the 23rd annual White Marlin Open.

A former president of the Ocean City Light Tackle Club, Bentos interprets every nuance in the ocean and understands what motivates fish.

"Tuna like cold water and marlin prefer warm water," he said recently on the upper level of his restaurant. "Saltwater deep-sea fishing is big time, the major leagues," he said. "Catching a marlin is hitting a home run, it can take half a day, or more, to catch the big blues."

Many times, it is just Bentos and his 20 year-old, 35 foot fishing boat, Caribena ("Caribbean girl"). He rigs his own bait and plots his own course, my boat lasted longer that my marriages," said Bentos.

"I really enjoy the privacy of my own reclusive sport." he said. "I don't have to talk for hours." It is in this time he said he finds his way and gains strength.

Under the stars, Bentos ruminates on things spiritual and practical. But, it's the thrill of the chase - a contest of equals - that makes him come alive. Like Santiago, he sees the marlin as a worthy opponent.

Bentos is a tag-and-release fisherman. To bring the fish along side of the boat to release the hook is tricky business. A marlin's long, Zorro-like sword could slice an artery in a flash.

Far from land, there is not much room for error, but Bentos said his belief in fate has spared him from "mala suerte," bad luck that could end his career.

Solo at Sea, He's in a League of His Own
Washington Post, Angus Phillips, May 20, 1997

The sea is warming off Ocean City. Soon, Carlos Bentos will pilot his boat around from the Chesapeake for another summer of billfishing offshore. Can he possibly match the success of 1996, when he was captain of the year, mate of the year, grand champion angler and top boat in the 237-boat fleet at the 23rd White Marlin Open?

He is almost certainly the only one with a shot. Most serious offshore boats have a hired captain and mate to tend to the details of billfishing. Bentos, 56, is an oddity with his 15-year-old Bertram 35, Caribeña: a single-hander.

"A one-man band," says rival billfisherman Joe Riley. "He does it all -- rigs the baits, runs the boat, wire the fish and cleans up afterward. I think it's a little flaky, but he does it."

"There's quite a lot of choreography" when he fights a leaping white or blue marlin alone, said Bentos, known to Washingtonians as owner of two restaurants in Georgetown and Bethesda, both called El Caribe.

Bentos says he enjoys being social in business, but also appreciates his lonely hours 70 to 80 miles on the Gulf Stream. "If I spend 10 hours with people," he said, " I look forward to 14 hours of fishing the next day."

His achievement last August was remarkable. The White Marlin Open is a three-day event conducted over five days. You get to pick your weather. Bentos planned to take a rest day, as consecutive starts at 4:30 am are exhausting. But the first three days were all fair, so he fished them all and went 5 for 5 on white marlin, boating and releasing every one he hooked while recording the events with a remote video camera for verification.

Meantime members of a film crew from Maryland's Public Television were shooting a TV show on other boats but got no footage of a fish being caught. They asked Bentos to take them out the last day even though his competitive work was done. "They told me, 'If we don't have a fish, we don't have a show,'" he said.

So off he went, boated yet another white marlin and in the process became a TV star. "I think they must not have any other shows," laughed the garrulous white-bearded angler. "They've run it about 12 times. Every week someone comes in and says, 'I saw you again on TV.'"

In the spring, before fishing at Ocean City turns on, Bentos and Caribena warm up by trolling for rockfish in the Chesapeake near his apartment in Annapolis. He's boated seven keepers and kept four since the season opened, including two 42-inchers on 20-pound test line and two of 36 and 38 inches on six pound test.

As past-president of the Ocean City Light Tackle Club, he specializes in the arcane sport of landing big fish on light line. When I joined him for an unsuccessful morning of trolling wild winds last week, he ran four lines -- two with 20-pound test, one with 17-pound and one with six-pound.

"I'm more interested in quality fishing than quantity" he said, adding that the prospect of trolling wire line with heavy sinkers and huge umbrella-style lures for rock does not appeal to him.

He started fishing from the beach in his native Uruguay, where black drum and red drum ran up the Rio de la Plata, Montevideo, and beyond. He began chartering for marlin in Cape Hatteras when he moved to Washington as an announcer for the Voice of America in 1969, and boated a 63-pound blue marlin his first trip. the fish is mounted on the wall of the Georgetown El Caribe.

Bentos said he went solo more by necessity than choice. In his early days here he knew no one who fished. Since going into the restaurant trade in 1974, his prime fishing days have been Mondays and Tuesdays, when most other folks are at work.

He bought his first boat, an Egg Harbor 33, in late August 1978. He upgraded to the Bertram in 1984, installing engine and steering controls in the cockpit so he could run it from the flying bridge or down below.

He trolls three or four lines and pays rapt attention. "The key to white marlin is seeing the fish," he said. "If you can see him and get to the rod before he gets to the bait, you've got him."

Bentos said whites are more demanding that blue marlin, tuna or sailfish, all of which will smash bait whether it's trolling or dead in the water. With whites, he said, the angler must throw the reel into free spool the instant the fish touches the bait, then let it dead-drift until just the right moment to set the hook, which he said is a matter of instinct.

One, an estimated 600-pounder, he fought from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. before it broke a snap-swivel one moonlit September night. He was accompanied by a teenager he'd reluctantly brought along at the request of the boy's father. The experience left its mark: The youngster now is Captain Robbie Paquette, a top marlin skipper on the East Coast tournament circuit.

He was alone on the last day of the White Marlin Open three years ago when another big blue struck just after 1 p.m. Capt. Jim Grant on the Cookie Cutter stood by alongside as he fought the 500- to 600-pound fish for six hours. The marlin was still green when the clock dictated Bentos try to boat it.

"We had to check in by 12:15 a.m., tournament rules," said Bentos, "and I had a three-hour run back to the dock plus the hour it would take me to put the fish in the boat." He made ready to gaff, then tail-rope the behemoth to winch it aboard but it ran under the boat, breaking the line on the transom.

So it goes for the single-handed billfisherman, who gets all the glory when things go right -- and all the blame when they go wrong.

On Hemingway's 100th Birthday, This Tale is about a Middle-Aged Man and the Sea

Papa's 100th Birthday Well Spent With Angler Of 'Historic Proportions' and Hemingwayesque Aura

The book is in English. He also is well along on a book of poems about the sea in his native Spanish.

And he sings in Spanish--grandly and operatically--from the bridge of Caribeña whenever the spirit moves him.

No single feature in the history of Marlin magazine has received the sheer volume of response that Jan Fogt's "Amazing Angling Feats" article generated when the March issue hit the stands. A few comments:

The "Amazing Angling Feats" article in the March issue was of particular interest because of the last item: "Most outstanding solo tournament feat," which described Carlos Bentos' efforts in the 1996 White Marlin Open at Ocean City, Maryland. Fishing alone, he tagged four out of five white marlin releases.

Carlos is a good friend of mine, and we both are members of one of the oldest fishing clubs in the country, the Ocean City Light Tackle Club. The Club celebrated its 50th year in 1997, and it published a 300-page book covering the Club's history and members' experiences over the years. Carlos has a number of "amazing feats" to his credit. All have been for "solo" expeditions to the canyons, 50 and more miles off of Ocean City. Among them, for which he has received awards from our club, are these:

1990 - Releasing five white marlin in one day, including a double header.

1993 - Received the Ocean City Marlin Club awards for the season for:
Most Billfish Released by an Angler
Most Billfish Released by and Angler in One Day
Most Billfish Released by any Boat under 40 feet
Most Billfish Released on Light Tackle

1996 - (the year your article references) - In the White Marlin Open, he released more white marlin than any other angler among more than 1,200 anglers participating. His boat released more white marlin that any of the other boats (237 total) in the tournament. For this he received awards from the Marlin Club for grand champion angler, captain of the year, mate of the year and top boat.