It is the season of calm; when the doldrums are omnipresent. Largely brought about by the influence of the summer Bermuda-Azores high pressure system, the lack of wind means that the seas are calm and the days are hot, hot, hot! While there may be little surface disturbance on the ocean, there may be some relatively massive swells brought about by long undulations that seem to go all the way back to Africa.The clear calm water can give the impression that you can see forever and, all too often, it just looks like there are no fish. You can see the chum disappearing into the deep but it’s as if you could see through the water as clearly as gazing across the street. Even when trolling you get the impression that you are working a vast three-dimensional wasteland, devoid of life.If you are thinking that way, you are way wrong. Just because it isn’t apparent does not mean that there is nothing there.Yes, it helps if there are signs of bait: fly fish zipping across the surface or shoals of flying squid flying through the air, refracting the sunlight into a million rainbows or tuna busting bait causing waves and swirls confirming the existence of life. But what about what you don’t see?Some evidence of this was found this past week by James Baxter who was aboard the sailing vessel, Spirit of Bermuda. He picked up the remains of a fairly large squid (some species attain massive sizes!) that measured about two feet long, less its tentacles. There was no one there to give a definitive identification but it may come as surprise to some to learn that the flying squid commonly seen on the Banks at around six or seven inches long are actually juveniles that attain several feet in length. The tricky bit is that they change their lifestyle and become relatively deep dwellers. Not that that protects them from their predators. There are also all sorts of denizens capable to escorting even a large squid out of this world into the next. So, there must be something out there.It is hard to fathom but a pelagic predator such as a wahoo, tuna or marlin can come out of the depths at a speed of more than 50 miles an hour and even in one second that allows the fish to cover almost 900 feet. Considering that this might even be vertical and accepting the fact that you can’t see more than about 200 feet down, this accounts for why they can magically appear behind a lure or inhale a bait sight unseen.And on that subject even though many local anglers, even keen ones, are getting sick and tired of hearing about billfish but the action over the last week or so has been nothing short of spectacular, particularly in terms of trophy fish.Capt. Allen DeSilva’s Mako maintained his exceptional record when they released a grander earlier this week. Although the only way to be sure of a weight is to kill the fish and bring it to a weigh station, the truth of the matter is that experienced crews are pretty damn good at eyeballing the fish and putting a weight on it. With conservation being the name of the game and, quite possibly, the key to maintaining a quality billfish fishery long term, releasing the fish is pretty much standard practice these days with certain tournaments being the only exception. Anyone with any doubts as to the procedures and antics that a fish this big can get up to prior to being turned loose by the boat’s crew can go on the Internet to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoHg0vVcN38&feature=youtube_gdata_player to see the action for themselves.Challenger, skippered by veteran Capt. Alan Card, has had his share of classy fish as well. In the last week or so, he has released several fish in the 700-pound plus category with at least one of them likely to have surpassed the magic 1,000 pound mark. In addition to his tally of blues, they have had a few white marlin providing a touch of variety.Capt. James Robinson’s Wound Up released a very respectable fish and Capt. Peter Olander’s Queen of Hearts continued its remarkable year with the release of another hefty blue marlin.Of the ever diminishing number of visiting boats, Waste Knot, Frayed Not, Billy the Kid, and local boats, Notorious and Reel Hot also all reported catching blues this week.In a normal year, if there is such a thing as a “normal” year, the bulk of the offshore effort shifts to concentrating on larger than usual yellowfin tuna. The tuna are usually more than willing to please and early indications were that it was going to be the case this year.Capt. Robinson’s Wound Up had a nice pair of yellowfins one trip, a 140 pounder alongside a 155-pound tuna. Mako, with Capt. Alan DeSilva at the helm, put a fine 170-pounder in the boat. All this evidence should have given new life to the pursuit of these fish but it rather seems that things have markedly eased off the last few days. Basically very few tuna have been caught and while the fish’s reticence to venture near the surface during the heat of the day is well known, even fishermen moving early have had little in the way of success.The wahoo eschew the heat and are usually few and far behind with the notable exception being on those occasions that you find some floating junk that has served as a beacon for a school of wahoo or dolphin or even a mixture of the two. That can really pay off even though the average size of the wahoo is likely to be small. Racking up a dozen or more is usually not difficult and given that both species are prised for eating, then such an encounter can led to a full freezer.An important thing to keep an eye out for is the arrival of juvenile mackerel (aka, even though mistakenly, frigate mackerel). These sometimes show up inshore first or over the flats before moving out to the edge and beyond. Their arrival often, but not always, coincides with an influx of wahoo in such numbers that they define the autumnal run. They are not essential to the late wahoo run but they can and do make a difference. In the meantime, there are other ways of finding wahoo, even when trolling won’t work.Those other readily available live baits, the robins, will flush out any wahoo that are hanging around but on those glassy days it can be depressing watching your bait swim through the ethereal blue with no visual likelihood of any Tight lines!!!