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TBF Board Members Get First-Hand Look at Mag Bay
By Bill Kearney
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One man’s give-and-take with the ocean
Harry Tellam’s
home office is
covered floor-to-
ceiling with
photos: fish, fishing buddies,
boats, more fish, plaques for
released fish, and then more
fish. It’s an apt setting in which
to relay a life on the water.
He had just returned from St.
Thomas where he and the crew
of the Reel Tight (Jim Lambert,
his brother-in-law’s, boat) had
spent nine days fishing the
September full moon. Harry
had boated an improbable
17 blue marlin in those nine
days – more than many marlin
anglers boat in a lifetime. This
seemed to be a ridiculous
stroke of luck, or was it fishing
karma, a balancing of the
ledger between man and sea?
BOY MEETS WATER
The relationship between
man and water began in the
1930’s on Chesapeake Bay,
where Tellam’s grandfather
would take him fishing for yellow
and white perch. “I used to
get on my bicycle and peddle
out to a stream which was 10 or
15 miles from home and catch
little bullheads and sunfish,” he
says. His wife, Nancy, chimes
in that he missed his own birthday
party as a child because he
was on a stream somewhere
fishing. “I married her because
she liked fishing, among other
reasons,” he says with just the
right amount of sarcasm.
Bluewater fever struck
Harry in dramatic fashion
when he was 13 years-old. At
the time, Ocean City, Md., was
considered the white marlin
capital of the world. Harry was
allowed to tag along on one of
his dad’s fishing/card playing
trips. “This was early in World
War Two [1941]. They had
even seen a German submarine
off shore. The guys used to use
big squid with #19 wire and
huge hooks for white marlin.
The mate who was with us that
day, Paul Mumford, decided
he would rig a bonita belly.
The men involved were in the
cabin playing cards, and this
marlin came up and grabbed
the line, and I got in the chair
and fought it. I think it was 3
½ hours. The fish weighed 347
pounds. I was 13 and I weighed
90 pounds.”
At age 13, Tellam landed
the first blue marlin ever
caught north of Cape Hatteras,
N.C. “They displayed it on
the boardwalk, and so many
people came to see it that the
boardwalk collapsed. A couple
of people went to the hospital.
I went to bed and dreamed
about it.” It would be almost
20 years before he would feel
another marlin on the line.
FINDING FLORIDA
After high school, Tellam
served with the occupational
forces in Japan and also fought
in Korea. Upon returning to the
States, a vacation in Florida
changed his life. He was napping
on the beach and awoke
to a crowd of people catching
pompano and bluefish. At that
moment he knew he had to live
in Florida. Key Biscayne was
still rural at the time and he
and his wife Nancy were able
to afford a house there with the
help of the G.I. Bill. Their first
piece of furniture was a 14-
foot Chris Craft kit boat that
he built in the backyard. Back
then Biscayne Bay was “like an
aquarium” and inshore fishing
kept him and Nancy busy. Still,
there was no shot at a marlin.
That would change when
Harry began working on power
plants and air conditioners for
Harcourt Brown, owner of
Brown’s Hotel in Bimini, Bahamas,
among other places.
Tellam had heard of Bimini’s
marlin fishing and pestered
Brown to tow his 18-foot run
about over behind Brown’s
freight boat. Brown agreed,
and cut Harry and Nancy loose
a mile off Bimini. Within five
minutes Harry was hooked
up to a blue marlin. The fish
hit a ballyhoo on the end of a
sawed-off spinning rod and
all hell broke loose. The fish
went airborne, the rod broke,
the line snapped and the fish
swam free. Harry, though, was
hooked on the thrill of offshore
fishing.
OFFSHORE PIONEERS
Tellam ventured to open water
as often as possible through
the 1960s and 70’s. These were
the primitive days of offshore
fishing. Imagine running
offshore without electronics,
without live bait, without kites,
without circle hooks. “Trolling
[dead-bait] was really the only
way anybody did anything
back in the 50’s, 60’s and early
70’s. You go out there and drag
a bunch of ballyhoo around and
hope you see one or two sailfish
a year,” says Harry. “120
feet of water was the magic
number, and we always used
to measure that by the lobster
pots. I think the sailfish were
always there, we just learned
how to catch more of them.”
Learning to catch more fish,
and eventually release more of
them, is Tellam’s legacy to the
sport. With a gregarious nature,
Harry became a sort of hub between
captains, biologists and
manufacturers. Bob Lewis,
the man responsible for kite
fishing as we know it today,
was a good friend. “We started
fishing with kites and suddenly
you’d see one or two [sailfish]
a day, maybe four! So fishing
with live bait became the thing
to do.” Live-wells didn’t exist
at the time so he and Lewis did
some head scratching, visited
Rotocast Plastic in Hialeah and
devised the first live-well out
of a massive mayonnaise shipping
container. Together Lewis
and Tellam spread the word
about kites, live bait and livewells.
As a result, catch rates
in South Florida skyrocketed
in the 1970’s. As this went on,
Harry also struck up a friendship
with marine biologist
Frank Mather of Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute and
later the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA). Mather was conducting
tagging and tracking
research on bluefin tuna and
was growing concerned about
human impact on the oceans.
Tellam, as it turned out, was
paying attention.
CATCH-AND-RELEASE PREACHER
In 1983, Harry and friends
established the first Miami
Billfish Tournament. It was
a kill tournament with rows
of dead sailfish at the dock.
“There was a time when there
were so many [fish] I guess you
couldn’t really hurt the population,
but then when it got very
popular and everyone’s bringing
the things in and hanging
them up, you realize that’s
the end of them,” says Harry.
He and his friends had spent
over 30 years devising ways
to catch more fish. Now they
had to look at the cost of that
success. With this realization,
Harry and other local anglers
established the Atlantic Game
Fish Foundation (AGFF). It
was via this foundation, and
Harry’s suggestions, that the
Miami Billfish Tournament
became the first known catchand-
release saltwater tournament
in history. Today’s catchand-
release ethic stems from
those early tournament days.
WHAT COMES AROUND…
After a lifetime on the water,
what does fishing mean to
Tellam? “It’s a challenge, it’s
the companionship of being on
the boat with a bunch of guys,
my wife and four sons…When
our family came along it was a
way to keep the family together…
that was a good thing…I
guess you can read that sign up
there .” He points to a plaque
on the wall that reads: “I’ve
spent most of my life fishing.
The rest I’ve just wasted.”
Today, Harry does a lot of
fishing on Lambert’s Reel
Tight with Capt. Eddie Herbert.
As karma would suggest,
Harry taught Capt. Eddie how
to fish when Herbert was a kid
running around the docks on
Key Biscayne. “Whenever I
went fishing out of here I had
to take him with me. When my
brother-in-law needed a captain,
I recommended Eddie and
he’s been working for him ever
since.” What comes around
goes around; Eddie captained
Harry to those 17 marlin off of
St. Thomas.
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