Tales of Tahitian Waters is a fishing story, or a collection of fishing stories, written by Zane Grey, and first published in 1931 by the Derrydale Press[1], a publisher most famous for stories of the outdoors, particularly hunting and fishing. The book was republished in 1990 and is widely considered one of the most important books of its kind.
Tales of Tahitian Waters describes Grey's fishing expeditions to the Tahitian Islands in 1928, 1929, and 1930. In the book, Grey claims to be the first big game fisherman to fish these waters and there is little cause to doubt his claim. He had passed through Tahiti en route to other fishing expeditions in Australia and New Zealand, and had heard of 30-foot-long (9.1 m) marlin and 50-foot-long (15 m) sharks. Grey held many fishing records for these species and was determined to pursue these fish. In Tales of Tahitian Waters he claims a special affection for these waters, and he visited them several times afterward, although those visits were not the subject of this book.
Grey believed that these were the most difficult waters he had fished. Amongst other trials, Tales of Tahitian Waters records an 83-day span during which Grey did not catch a single billfish. It is believed that this provided inspiration for Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea[2]. Grey's Tahiti expeditions were months at a time, and he built a permanent camp at Vairao, a beach he describes in superlatives.
The most noteworthy fish Grey writes about in this book was the 16-foot-long (4.9 m), 1,040-pound (470 kg) blue marlin caught three days before the end of his 1930 expedition. This was the first marlin ever caught weighing 1,000 pounds (450 kg) or more. His fishing mate, Capt. (aka "Cappy") Mitchell had caught a 976-pound (443 kg) black marlin in an earlier expedition to New Zealand, but the 1,000-pound threshold had not previously been achieved. The fish was attacked by sharks during the fight, and Grey's crew valiantly fended off the sharks, killing many of them. The shark attack damaged the big marlin's tail region, and Grey asserts in the book that the fish would have weighed 1,250 pounds (570 kg) if not for the sharks. However, the book also recounts several other battles with far larger marlin that were too big for the tackle. This says much, as Grey brought the heaviest tackle available on the market at the time. In fact, some of the rods and reels brought on the Tahiti expeditions were specially designed and custom made for Grey for exactly the purpose of catching bigger fish than had ever before been caught. For instance, the huge Kovalovvsky 20/0 reel that was custom made by Arthur Kovalovsky for Grey. This was the reel on which the 1,040-pound marlin was caught. It held more than a mile of heavy line[3].
Tales of Tahitian Waters also includes descriptions of a number of previously uncatalogued species, some of which Grey caught and recorded, some of which were hooked but were too big to bring to the boat, and some of which were merely seen in the water. The book includes many photographs taken by Grey and his crew, as well as a few watercolors painted by artists who stayed at Grey's fishing camp.