Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, guys, I should say, a hoy, because we got a nautical theme for you on the Behavioral Corner. We welcome you all in. We hope you found this by now and are enjoying what you hear. We are a podcast that we like to say is about everything because everything winds up affecting our behavioral health. So a settle in, we've got ...we've got an interesting topic here. We're way off the beaten path for us. But I think there's a lesson to be learned in here about setting a goal, sort of achieving it, and then having it somehow taken away and how that...how you deal with something like that our guest from his work site, I suppose in North Carolina, is Ashley Bleau. Ashley is a professional fisherman. He's a sports fisherman. He's described himself in the New York Times recently as a "Down East Redneck." Or "good old boys" as I like to think about it. So and he's got a great story to tell. He has a fish story. Now I'm not a fisherman. But I know a good fish story when I hear one. And generally speaking, in most cases, fish stories are about "Wow, let me tell you about the one that got away." The fish that got away. Well, this is about something getting away, but it wasn't the fish. It was something pretty significant. And I think there's a lesson to learn about how these guys dealt with all this. Ashley Bleau, Thanks for joining us on the behavior corner.

Ashley Bleau 
Thank you for having me.

Steve Martorano 
Well, it's a pleasure. I love this...I love the story. didn't like the way it turned out. But we'll find out more about that. Tell us a little bit about yourself. You grew up near the water. So I guess there's always going to pull for you right?

Ashley Bleau 
Yes, sir. I grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, which is about 30 minutes west of Morehead City where we actually had the fish and tournament. We didn't grow up going to Disney World or that money was kind of limited. My mom worked as a produce manager at the local grocery store and a substitute teacher, my dad sold fertilizer so we knew all about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And we always go down to my grandfather's fishing camp down on folk sound growing up and our end of the vacation time was always spent going to the Morehead City waterfront and eating at the sanitary and walking up and down the waterfront, looking at all those charter boats and the big beautiful boats and the reels and everything. And I always told my dad, one day I loved to own one of those...I'm going to own one Dad and he popped me in the back of the head and said "I hope you do one day" so I was lucky enough last March to be able to buy the Sensation and kind of fulfill a bucket list and a dream that I've always had. So that's kind of what's brought me to where I'm at now.

Steve Martorano 
Shows you the virtues of peanut butter sandwiches, that's for sure. And having a dream I'm sure when your dad hit you in the back of the head and said I wish you the best. He wasn't betting you were gonna do it was he?

Ashley Bleau 
That's right. He...he always saw and we always talked about on the ride back how...how somebody could have possibly afford one of those boats and I just it was mind-blowing not only to me, but to him as well. And so he was originally from West Virginia. My mom was from Huntington and my dad was from Charleston, two separate hollers. So everybody knows that the family tree does a fork.

Steve Martorano 
For people who know way more about this than I do describe the Sensation for us the size of it, and what it should primarily use for what type of fishing.

Ashley Bleau 
This Sensation was Randy Ramsey's first boat he built for himself for his own charter boat business. It's a 52-foot Jarrett Bay, and if anybody knows anything about Jarrett Bay, they build the 8, 10 $20 million sport fishing boats and it was the very first one ever built. It started the company. And now it's one of the biggest, most prestigious sports fisherman boats that's built and I'm just honored to be a chapter in that book of the history of that boat. It's a single screw, meaning it only has one engine which is not something that's normal for most sportfishing boats, they're normally twin screwed twin engines. And it is like driving a skid steer where you can use one motor to overpower the other one to turn even if you lose steering. Well, this boat is only single screws so when you back it up, it pulls to your port site. And so it's it takes a little bit more understanding that to drive the boat it's it's definitely a living museum.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, and I suppose even I can understand that. That would make battling a four or 500-pound fish even more difficult if you've only got that one engine, and it only pulls in one direction, right? So the sensation by the way, ultimately resulted in your company, Sensation Sports Fishing Company, you take people out right on excursions for big-time fishing.

Ashley Bleau 
Yes, sir. We are a charter boat. We don't have all the frills and spills of most of the other boats, we operate off of raw data that we get from our depth finder and the expertise of our cabin and our mate. In this day and time a lot of the sport fishing boats have Omni seminars, where they can see basically a three or five-mile swath of water and see what fish are there and almost like a video game lock on to them and, and basically just keep driving over top up until they raise them up. We look at currents, water temperature, articles that are actually in the water, rips in the water currents, ledges, and all that stuff. So we're it's basically like competing with the Mayflower versus some of the big cargo ships these days. So...

Steve Martorano 
You guys are old school, that's for sure. And just to put a fine point on this. The tournament we're going to talk about that you guys hold in the biggest fish attracts big time, sports fishermen, and people you might not expect to be involved in this. I'm thinking of Michael Jordan. You guys competed against Michael Jordan's boat?

Ashley Bleau 
We sure did. It's the Catch 23. A beautiful Viking, very plush and sleek and a pleasure to look at and we also competed against Terry Labonte, which is a NASCAR racecar driver and he's got the boat Switching Gears. and we competed against the world's best fishermen. I mean, they come from Los Swinggo Costa Rica, from the Dominican, from Texas, Alabama, all the way up to Delaware, Maryland. They all come to Morehead City to fish this tournament because it's known as a rodeo tournament. You've got two different types of tournaments. Basically, you got the real strict ones, which are the IGFA, the International Game Fish Association sanctioned, where you're not allowed to switch anglers, you can only use certain tackle. Well, the Big Rock is a rodeo tournament, they only operate on their own rules, except for the rule that affected us, which was the mutilation rule. And, they don't even reference it in full language, they just arbitrarily send you to another book to hopefully decipher through it. And that's where a lot of the protest was based to be able to make sure their diligence was taken. I mean, it was a $3.5 million prize and a 619.4-pound fish, which was the 14th largest fish ever caught in that 65-year-old tournament. They average between eight and 10 fish being landed per year. So to have the 14 biggest one out of 650 fish landed. It's pretty substantial. It's a time that I'll never forget.

Steve Martorano 
It's clear, even for me who I have practically no knowledge of this, except what I've seen on television. You Down East guys, we're the hometown favorites, right?

Ashley Bleau 
We're just one of a few. I mean, we've got a whole waterfront of wonderful fishermen. We are just it's more of a very supportive network. The Morgan City waterfront has about 12 boats, not all of them were fishing in the tournament for one reason or another but predominantly from the Bill Collector to Due South to Buy Out, Real Country, and Dancing Outlaw...they're pretty much our dock mates and we fish with them every day. Basically, they charter boats just like we are and so we communicate. And it's almost like a brotherhood. I mean, everybody's got brothers that they don't get along with and brothers that they do and we pretty much everybody for the most part if somebody needs something we look out for each other and so to say we're Downeast boat, we were built down east we are we operate on a daily basis Down East but not everybody that's on that waterfront is from Down East. It kind of works together to be able to have people that you can rely on and it's a great feeling in the tournament. The actual weigh-in slip is about, I don't know, six slips down from our slips. I mean, we every morning, we see the Big Rock landing every morning before we go offshore. And so to be able to be a boat that got to participate in back in that slip, there isn't but a select few of us that have been able to achieve that.

Steve Martorano 
Because a lot of people come back empty-handed, correct?

Ashley Bleau 
Yes, sir.

Steve Martorano 
This Big Rock, Blue Marlin tournament, you describe to the media is a Super Bowl. It's just, it doesn't get any bigger in terms of sports fishing. And we're gonna get into a little bit about what happened to you guys. But first, this great description of the brotherhood now brings people together. Can you talk a little bit about what goes through your mind or any sports fishermen, when they go out? And drop the line? And then a big fish strikes? What's that feeling like?

Ashley Bleau 
Well, it's an adrenaline rush. It's obviously a man versus beast type, adrenaline rush where you are sitting there with anxiety of, hey, when is this going to happen, I hope it's going to happen. And oh, my goodness it's happening and how to react. And the only thing that can help you through that type of situation is repetitive motion, and dealing with it day in and day out. Because honestly, the first time it happened to me, I didn't know whether to scratch my watch or wind my rear end. As far as a lot of things, it's just a lot of things moving at one time, and when it happens, time over time you become it's a fundamental reaction. And like when you see the fish hit, whoever grabs the rod first to go ahead. And whether we're circle hook fishing, or J hook fishing, to make sure that the hook set and it's you're fighting the fish, then everybody else works simultaneously to be able to relay in all the other lines so that the lines don't get clogged up. And then once we get everything aboard for the captain to do his job and start working the boat and maneuver in the boat so that the angler can have the best opportunity to reel the fish in. So it's exciting. It's every time it never ends up a dull moment. So you never get accustomed to that feeling. But to be able to know what to do at the right time. It's super gratifying.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, to too many people, I think, even big-time fishing that they've witnessed but not participated in or dropped a line on the edge of a creek or something. It looks like luck. You know, it's like, okay, let's drop it here. The fish bites it we haul it in, or maybe we don't. There are a lot of moving parts. You just described an enormously complicated process. That just must take an enormous amount, as you said, practice and repetition, but also concentration. There's not a lot of fooling around when a big one strikes, right?

Ashley Bleau 
No, it's a, it's like Carpe Diem, you need to seize the day, when the opportunity presents itself, and you need to be ready to step forward and make the most of the opportunity.

Steve Martorano 
My guest is Ashley Bleau, he is the owner and operator of the Sensation. And the Sensation is the boat that makes up his sport fishing company. So that all being said, let's put you in that tournament. The rules of which are complicated, and I don't want to get into too many of them. But it has to do with the size of the fish has to be at least 400 pounds. Is that what it was?

Ashley Bleau 
Yes, in order to vote the fish, it needs to be at least 400 pounds. And so otherwise, you'll get disqualified and more than likely deal with no. Which is the federal government on improperly landing fish but yes, at least 400 pounds. And we have certain criteria that they give us to work off of length and then multiplied times girth gives us a roundabout a very conservative approach to the weight of the fish.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. And so the rules are you hook the fish fight for as long as it takes and then vote him as you say so you can bring them back in so that he can be examined and it can be determined just exactly what you have caught with this. I'm going to get into this a little later. But maybe the greatest book about fishing ever written was Hemingway's The Old Man in the Sea. And I'm thinking about that right now and I'll get through it a little bit but because of what happened to you guys. When you struck that fish that fish struck, where you were on the boat when the fish was caught right

Ashley Bleau 
Oh yes, you've got a time limit from nine o'clock to three o'clock. Actually, you can't have your lines in before nine, you can't have your lines in after three o'clock. And so we finished the whole week, the whole week, it was really really snotty. My captain calls at hobblygobbly. But it was the first day we were four to six-foot swells stacking up to eight to 10 feet. And we had a crew on the boat of a charter, it was made up of six people that weren't necessarily seasoned fishermen, but four of them spent their whole day looking pretty green. And, you know, chumming basically for us. We didn't catch anything the first day we didn't catch anything the second day. We laid, which means we took the two days off for the next two days because the weather kind of subsided a little bit. And then we fished the last two days, which was a Friday and Saturday. So the Saturday that we caught fish, we'd fished all day and didn't catch anything. I mean, searched all our tricks that we could basically went back to an area that we had fished charter boat fishing, and ended up hooking into lines went off and we called it into the Big Rock and said, you know, Sensations hooked up, because we have to tell them what time we hooked up. So they can document it. By the time we reeled it in and cleared on one's route, everything in it was a barracuda it was about a 30-pound barracuda. And so it was the wrong species. So with a little bit of egg on her face, we had to call in and say Sensation, wrong species, which means that we weren't hooked up we did not have a billfish and we had to let it go. So that was a 2:15. And probably about to have we had to put the lines back out. We run about nine different lines plus teasers plus stretches. And so we all kind of settled in realizing the last 45 minutes of the tournament. You know, we'd had a pretty depressing showing between the other days we fished. This is a tournament that you spent $52,500 to enter so it's not like you just put a couple of 100 bucks down and let's go out and see what we catch. the temperament of the crowd was pretty bleak. And then so we all kind of settled in for the last 45 minutes and at 2:15 this monster Marlin jumps from left to right and crashes on our port side short, which is a line that as you go up the outriggers, you've got to port long, which is the longest one back is at the top of the rigger. Then you got your next one which is your port short, which sits a little bit shorter closer to the boat. And then you've got your teaser so when he crashed on that port short, I got a full broadside view that fish totally aired out out of the water. And he bent that lower and he hauled bogey away from the boat. You could almost hear him grunting it was like a horse running through a field of rah rah rah rah and just splashing and everything and...

Steve Martorano 
What was going through your mind at that moment?

Ashley Bleau 
Oh my God, it was I looked like a one-armed paper hanger trying to reel in teasers reel in rods and give direction to the guys down below to go ahead and start pulling stuff in because I knew what we had when he hit. And we got I got everybody motivated up. I mean, it was just a blur. But we...we got everything in Captain Greg McCoy, my captain did everything he was supposed to and in backing the boat down scooter, my mate was done in the cockpit. He was clear in lines and working through, you know the situation at hand and preparing the angler, Bally Gore to be able to reel it in and get him all strapped in. Because when you're hooked to a 600-pound fish, and you're only a 200-pound man, that fish can easily pull you overboard. We got everything going. Next thing we know we're backing down we're seeing the fish go from right to left and left to right, come back at us. Chargeback away did that about three times and each time you had to maneuver the seat so that you keep that angler in line with the fish. So after about an hour and a half of that, the fish ran away from us one last time and then dove deep. Normally these fish stay on top. But when they have exhausted that much energy to the point that they dive deep, they're basically going to die. They are not they whether they know it or not, I don't know but that's what ends up happening. And they go deep. And then the pressure of going from up top, to down 900 feet deep, the heart ends up exploding. And so when they go down there it is, the fight is basically over. Then it's just a matter of retrieving the body. And so when that fish went down 900 feet deep, which is 150 fathoms Fathom six feet. From that point forward, it was just a matter of winching him up. And Bailey Gore he, he fought him the whole time. And then he basically was just whooped. And so we went through all six anglers, which each one of them basically gave it everything that they had, then finally, I said, Look, guys, if you want me to, I'll get down out of the bridge, and I'll bring him up. So that's what I did. And as I was fighting him up from retrieving the body from them below, it was basically four to six inches every crank, you know, having to take one hand pull on the cable, the other hand turned real. And stepping back because you use your legs because you're in a bucket harness to pull it back, I pushed down so hard on the chair that the foot portion of the chair broke in half, I mean, it hit the bar that holds it in place broke. So then I ended up putting my feet up against the transom and trying to work back and forth, and in the back of the chair fell out. So then we had to, I had to walk over to the side of the gunnel. In order with this big rod, I'm latched to and the 600-pound fish, you know, I'm trying to bring that's willing to sing, and I managed to get it into the gunnel. And then from that point forward, it was the next four hours of just four inches at a time, anything that I could get. And so we were trying to even rock the boat from side to side to get some kind of lift on him, we tried a couple maneuvers of turning the boat around and in a circle going into the current to hopefully float the body up kind of as a planer to get some lift on it. And we ended up losing more lines than we then gained so it was just man versus beast on winching up 619-pound fish from the bottom of the ocean.

Steve Martorano 
That sounds like by the way half the battle is just bringing the as you say the body aboard doesn't say you know, once you get the fish that's only part of it. Start to finish. How long does it take you to get the fish on the boat?

Ashley Bleau 
Six and a half hours.

Steve Martorano 
Six and a half hours? When you know throughout that entire process. You've got a big fish when you finally you know, get the fish on the boat are you convinced you've won this tournament?

Ashley Bleau 
Yes, sir. 110%

Steve Martorano 
When the fish when the fish weigh

Ashley Bleau 
According to the chart, it was 114 inches long and it was 54 inches around and girth. The chart said it was 603 pounds.

Steve Martorano 
603 pounds. Okay, so now you're how far away from where you're going to dock? How long did it take you to get back in?

Ashley Bleau 
We're 70 miles offshore. It took us a little over three hours to get back to shore.

Steve Martorano 
Safe to say the three-hour ride back was a party right?

Ashley Bleau 
There wasn't a cold beer left on the boat.

Steve Martorano 
In addition to this titanic struggle, man against the beast takes six hours. There's a lot of money. Your guys that put together...you put together a syndicate you sold shares in this effort to raise the money to get in. People were going to make some money. You were looking at like your end, as I understand it was over $300,000, right?

Ashley Bleau 
About 350 grand. Yes, sir.

Steve Martorano 
Oh yeah, it's a big tournament and you beat Michael Jordan, which is unbelievable. He doesn't get beat by anybody anyway, you bring the vote in party word is already spread the Sensation's coming in with the fish that's probably going to win this thing. And the local people are probably having fun as well. Your brothers and fishing. You get in and then fate steps in. And that's why we reached out to you because it's the way you handled this. Why were you disqualified?

Ashley Bleau 
Oh, was disqualified because they're rule 23 dealing with mutilation they refer to the IGFA rules, which is the only rule that they adhere by, with respect to IGFA. And it says that if it comes in counter with a propeller or another marine animal, a shark, any type of imperfections to the fish will be disqualified. It's basically to figure out mutilation, the thought behind them the rule which I will never agree with, not just because I lost because of it because the rule is impractical, is basically you driving out there and you see a fish that's been bitten by a shark and you go ahead and land it. And then you see the fish is grand it's been bitten by a shark and you didn't really fight it. You take it in, then you win the tournament, you didn't fight or you hook up with a fish, and all of a sudden, a shark comes up and bites the tail off of it, and the fish is no longer able to fight, you're able to read it in with relative ease. None of this occurred. And so that's where our biggest stick in the whole matter was, was the biologist identified and when we brought it ashore, that it had come in counter with some marine animal and had a superficial and I say superficial was like skinning your knee, place on it in between the anal fin and the tail fin, about the size of your fist, but only about an inch deep. So it didn't even bleed.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, you know what's amazing about that you should be...I understand the rule, which means it's got to be a fair fight. If the fish is injured. It wasn't a fair fight. But any fish that takes six hours to get on a boat and weighs 600 pounds. I don't care how much it was bitten, it gave a hell of a fight. Anyway, you get in thinking you won. You did have the biggest fish that wasn't even a consideration. But you're disqualified. And you get no money at all for your effort?

Ashley Bleau 
That's correct.

Steve Martorano 
That's incredible. Tell me about the feeling that you guys had, it must have been a deflating moment.

Ashley Bleau 
Well, there are all kinds of emotions. I mean, we're riding back into Morehead City waterfront and you've got 12,000 people out there hanging off of every one of the boats, bars, the Big Rock landing, people on top of the roof, people have been out there for nine hours, waiting for us to come in friends, family, competitors, everybody wants to see a big fish. We gotta back in on big rock, Landon, and fire engines out there, blowing their horns, you got people screaming. I mean, it was the ultimate high you've ever could ever experience. And then, in a matter of five to 10 minutes being docked. The guy was telling me that they're gonna disqualify the fish.

Steve Martorano 
So anyway, it's just a horrible situation. Everyone's crushed. How did it resolve itself? Because this is the key here to why we're talking to you on the Corner. Do you guys handle this? You handle it certainly, in an incredibly measured way. I mean, at first, you fought it. But ultimately, you have withdrawn, your objection to the ruling. Why did you do that?

Ashley Bleau 
Well, in a nutshell, I mean, there's, there are battles that you can fight and win, and there are battles that you can fight and you look back and wish you hadn't. And this was definitely a battle I wish I had never been to...I'm not gonna say never been a part of but...

Steve Martorano 
You made a strategic and graceful withdrawal, you knew you couldn't win this hand...

Ashley Bleau 
What was going to end up happening, was we had about a...about a 10% chance that we were going to win it as far as in the court of law. And we recognize that, ultimately, the legacy of sensation, I didn't want it to be of creating hormones, something that's an economic engine for a community that I truly respect. And I would rather take this opportunity to bring some awareness to some things that obviously may change. Not necessarily for my fish, but for other people's. And so as my dad always said, try to make lemonade out of lemons.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. And again, here on the Behavioral Corner, we talk about the way people behave and decisions they make and how it affects them, you know, psychologically, emotionally, and all of that. And I'm not blowing a lot of smoke at you, what you did was, you took something that could have been about you, and about your syndicate, and about prize money. And you put it to one side and said, No, I don't want to sell you this thing I love and that's important to my community. I'm just going to stand down and fish the other day. You know, good for you. And not a lot of people currently I look at around the world are willing to admit when they've been defeated. When they can't win this hand. And they can in your case fish the other day, so good for you. It's an inspiring story. It really is. I know you would have much rather gotten the money and acknowledgment but everybody down there I know knows who caught the largest fish that day. And, you know, as I said, it should be a lesson for all of us, I mentioned earlier, I'm gonna let you get back to work. The Hemingway the great Hemingway novel. The Old Man and the Sea. If you know the story, the old man goes out alone. He's tired. He's been fishing his entire life. But he, he's just like Ashley and his friends. He loves the sea,, he loves the struggle, and he catches the fish of his life, which is coming to an end because he's very old. It's a gigantic fish that is on the way back in tethered to the side of his little skift mutilated and eaten almost beyond recognition by sharks. So the fish is kind of gone except for the skeletons and the old man is spent. But at some point, here's the quote I want to share with you. Actually, I don't know if you've, you know it, but in the book, the old man says, "But man is not made for defeat." He said, "A man can be destroyed, but not defeated." And I take that to mean, you know, fight another day. I wasn't defeated. I am disappointed. I don't have the fish there anymore. But he goes on from there. To make the greater point. You remind me of that old guy.

Ashley Bleau 
Well, thank you. I consider that being in great company with some great people. And I just hope it is an inspiration for others and it can benefit others. It's life's not always about the money.

Steve Martorano 
Yep, it's also about grace. Another thing Hemingway said in another context is "courage is grace under pressure." And you showed grace not you know, you showed power and skill and landing that fish but you showed grace in how you handled the disappointment of not getting the prize money. So you have our congratulations Ashley Bleau of Sensations Sports Fishing in North Carolina. Ashley, have you heard from Hollywood yet?

Ashley Bleau 
No, sir. But uh, I think people like John Candy and Chris Farley are already passed. So I don't know if they'll be able to find an actor to play a role in this get.

Steve Martorano 
In the right hands, it'll make a hell of a movie. They'll come up with somebody to play it. Oh, you play yourself. You look like you could probably handle it. Thanks so much for your time. I know you're busy. Again, congratulations. We all know who had the biggest fish in that tournament. And I'm sure you're going to be out there again, first chance you get into that big Super Bowl of fishing?

Ashley Bleau 
Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to give a shout-out to my daughter who is also tried to make this huge pot of lemonade out of lemons. She has developed T-shirts, and they're on the sensation websites www.sensationsportfishing.com or on our Facebook page and say, The People's Champ and we've had a huge outpouring of people supporting us and willing to wear the shirts. And, you know, that gives me the greatest satisfaction that once again, I can teach my daughter a little bit about couth a little bit about you know, life is always gonna send you challenges and it's how you deal with them. So it's gonna define you. so...

Steve Martorano 
Excellent. We'll have links to both of those sites so people can see the T-shirts and the Facebook and all of that. Ashley Bleau. Thanks so much, man. let you get back to work. Good luck going forward. I hope you catch a lot of fish.

Ashley Bleau 
Thank you for this great opportunity. Have a good one.

Steve Martorano 
Our pleasure. Bye bye. And goodbye to you all as well. Don't forget to follow us, like us, and give us a review on iTunes. We appreciate it. The Behavioral Corner is made possible by the way, with our underwriting partners Retreat Behavioral Health. We have more for you straight ahead.

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