Those of you who like to fish by the rules can just go ahead and put all your gear into mothballs. You won’t even be contemplating using it again until April at the very earliest.Rules? What rules? Here opens an interesting topic for discussion. Local anglers often refer to the fishing season and these very words can mean a number of things. In fact, if dealing with tourists things can get really complicated. So how can something so simple lead to complexity.Easy really; our relative naiveté sets us up for a fall and we usually lurch right into it.First off, visitors to our Island are usually a lot more season-conscious than we are. For the most part, they endure or enjoy (depending on an individual point of view) four seasons of weather. Related but not necessarily directly tied to that cycle are a number of other seasons. They have hunting season, fishing season, trapping season and probably things like camping season. Most of these are defined by certain laws and they may even be subdivided into duck and deer hunting season; freshwater fishing season with an additional trout or salmon season constituting part of the overall season. So, most foreigners are pretty highly aware of seasonality.Then you will have the local angler who will, usually in an off-handed manner, say something like: “It isn’t marlin season”. His meaning is that now is the time of the year when marlin are unlikely to be around so there isn’t much point going looking for one. The visitor will hear this and immediately think that people are not legally allowed to catch marlin at this time of year.Then there is the concept of season put forward by fishing clubs and tournament organisers who refer to “the fishing season”, in reality referring to that time of the year when fishing is done. Just where does this misnomer arise from?Well, most of the blame can probably be assigned to our marketers. Not the current ones, of course. The whole idea dates back some 40 years when Bermuda was really trying to make a name for itself in the increasingly competitive tourism world and sport fishing was another attraction that the then Trade Development Board (TDB) decided that it should tout.In respect of this initiative, S.L. ‘Pete” Perinchief, a noted local angler and sportswriter was hired to run the Bermuda Fishing Information Bureau (F.I.B.) as part of the TDB. This was a one man operation whose job it was to encourage sports fishing on the Island, primarily for tourists but much of what it did was open to locals as well.Among the enticements were the citation programme (it may be recalled that here were differences in the sizes of the fish required for residents as opposed to visitors) and the silver pin angling awards.As the TDB became the Department of Tourism, Bermuda’s angling image became higher profile as Pete liaised with numerous international writers for magazines and newspapers that dealt with angling. This led to greatly increased exposure and there were even promotions for fishing with airlines, notably the now-defunct Eastern Airlines Flying Fisherman programme.Around about the same time, the late 1960’s, early 1970’s; the respected outdoors-oriented magazine Field and Stream compiled a book that featured various exotic angling destinations around the world. Bermuda was indeed one of those listed and the F.I.B. had significant input into that particular section.This was a major opportunity for Bermuda and was recognised as such by Mr. Perinchief. His contribution was a vital elements and was later expanded in a really fine pamphlet produced by the Tourism Department entitled Bermuda- Island of Great Fishing. This was a colour glossy-covered booklet that had fishing information pretty much species by species (broken down into inshore, reef and offshore). Lots of pictures and angling tips made it a sure-fire success with both visitors and locals alike; so much so, that even today, there are a few copies in local anglers collections.It was in this booklet, that it was made abundantly clear that the angling season in Bermuda was from April through November. Indeed all the F.I.B. competitions (Fish of the Month, etc.) were tied to this period. The advertising that was done, mostly by the Government through the F.I.B., also reinforced this idea even though at one point it was mentioned that the main reason for this was that, during the other months, the winds would make a day offshore “uncomfortable”.So there, in rather more than a nutshell, is the reason why the thought still lingers in some people’s minds that the angling comes to an end as November becomes a thing of the past.Perhaps not so surprisingly, the angling clubs pretty much organised their activities around the abbreviated angling year rather than using the twelve month calendar year. A club or two tried to broaden horizons by eventually extending their competitions to include the so-called “off-season months” but beyond the conceptual approach, the idea of a season has little factual basis.Commercial fishermen have always fished pretty much throughout the year with the usual down period occurring in February when the weather is generally at its worst. That is also a good time to take overseas vacations and the time is prime for getting the boat slipped in advance of improving conditions both in terms of the weather and fish availability from about mid-March onwards. With that as the exception, wahoo and tuna are caught regularly with occasional bursts of activity that reward those who take advantage of every fishable day.Even some of the charter operators got in on the action. The Gibbons brothers whose Coral Sea was one of the fleet’s flagships back in the day, often went well into December chumming for yellowfin tuna on the Banks.Many turned to drifting on the Banks and working the bottom for a steady supply of fish that were readily accepted in the local market. This was in the days before things got really exotic and longlines (actually vertical lines) became the next fad. For the first few years there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of red snappers (another nomenclature subject for another day!) and enough John Paw rockfish to make this a most attractive fishery but after a couple of years, the commercial men were going back to the time-honoured methods.The eventual expansion of the once curtailed spiny lobster fishery also had an effect on the industry with most fishermen now making lobsters the centre of their attention and using some of the traditional methods as a means of enhancing their operation. Certainly, the lobster market usually takes a hit as the post-holiday bills make their presence felt and the restaurants specialising in such sea food move into slower times with the decline in both local and tourist business.To return to the original question, are you one of those sportsmen who won’t go fishing again until April or May; or will you persevere through the winter months, catching some often more than just respectable wahoo and tuna. Wahoo are almost always available to trollers while schools of yellowfin often persist through the cooler months and either one is more than capable of providing some “out-of-season” Tight lines!!!