The Early Years: From Cranford to Brielle, New Jersey

Born in Cranford, New Jersey, the fishing bug bit DeGutis early. He was nine when his father, Bernard, an ace mechanic by first profession, built a 30-foot boat, the Playmate, and began chartering out of Brielle. “My dad had me help him. When I was 10 or 11, he started paying me,” DeGutis recalled. “When I was 12, I quit him to work on another charter boat because I’d get the same pay as the full-grown guys. In the summer, one of the charter boat captains had an attic in his house with four beds and I’d rent one. It was right outside the door and close to the docks. I worked on the Sea Queen for Capt. Peter Lane. Those first charters were all day because there was no such thing as a half day. We had too far to go, and the boats weren’t very fast back then. A really fast boat on the Manasquan River back in 1947 or 1948 might be 15 knots. I liked the fishing. I liked making people on charters happy, and I liked making good money.”

The Record-Breaking Catch: A Swordfish for the Ages

August 3, 1976, started like any other for Captain Ben DeGutis, mate Steve Matthews, and Jack Willits, owner of the 45-foot Rybovich, Frisky Lady. The trio headed out of Nantucket, Massachusetts on a routine scouting trip looking for tailing swordfish. DeGutis was ready with two ballyhoo-baited rods, one with  80 pound-test line,another with 30 set up for swords, and a 20-pound outfit prepared in case of white marlin. After a slow morning, DeGutis, riding high atop the tower, spied what he thought was a small sword in front of the boat. He called down to Willits in the cockpit, who grabbed the 30-pound outfit, and got what turned out to be the big sword to bite.

Four-and-a-half hours later, with Willits fishing stand-up the entire time, the 392-pounder was in the boat. According to Steve, whose account of the catch was published in the 2009 edition of The History of the Manasquan River Marlin & Tuna Club, of which Jack was a long-time member, there was an IGFA record book aboard the Frisky Lady. ‘I mentioned to both Ben and Jack that we may have a world record,” Matthews said. “I think they both thought I was crazy.” Sure enough, and made official at the scales, Willits’ sword bested the then 264-pound record.

“Every once in a while, I’d get Jack to hook up a blue shark on 30,” says DeGutis, who worked for Jack for 19 years on first his Rybovich, a 36-footer, then on the 45-footer, both named Frisky Lady. “I’d tell him to keep tightening up the drag, saying, ‘I want you to feel how much is going to be too much and it’ll break,’” DeGutis said.  “Again, I wanted him to have an idea of what he could put on the rod and how much of a bend. It seemed to work. He put good pressure on that swordfish, and he knew to take the drag off if it was taking off quickly. In the end, he caught it. That record stood for 41 years.”

A Lifelong Passion: From Charter Boats to Legendary Captains

Soon, DeGutis began helping his father take his now 46-foot Matthews, Sportscaster, south to Florida’s North Palm Beach Marina in the winter to charter. The two lived on the boat, and Ben walked to school during the week. “To run south from Brielle took 11 or 12 days,” said DeGutis. “We only made 10 or 11 knots. Every night we stopped for fuel. Back then, you’d stop at a marina and the guy would be so happy you bought fuel that he wouldn’t charge you for the slip. And he’d probably give you a ride to a place to eat if you wanted and wait for you and bring you back. Those were different times.”

One day, the elder DeGutis proved his marketing talent for creatively booking charters. A friend had hunted in the Everglades and bagged a big wild cat. “My dad says to his friend, ‘Can I borrow that? You can pick it up around 9 pm this evening.’” DeGutis said. “He hangs it on a gin pole on the back of the boat. I don’t know how many people stopped to talk to him because of that cat. He booked five charters.”

Several skippers back then moved seasonally between Florida and the Northeast. It was from one of them that stopped in Brielle that Capt. Ben heard about legendary Capt. Red Stuart. He made up his mind to someday work for him. That happened in the early 1950s. “I took my first trip to Bahamas and caught my first blue marlin with him,” DeGutis said of his trip to Bimini on Stuart’s 42-foot Matthews, Sandona. “I’ll never forget it because it was the first one I ever grabbed the leader wire on. Back then we used all wire, not monofilament. It came in tailed up, so it wasn’t doing much. I said, ‘That one wasn’t any fun! It was too easy.’ Well, the next one we caught went crazy at the boat. I joked afterward that I thought I liked the first one better.”

Freelancing and Adventure: Exploring New Waters

Japan’s Mount Fuji filled DeGutis’ horizon for one of the four years he served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s, back in New Jersey, he started skippering the 48-foot Morton Johnson, Magnus, for Finn Magnus, a prosperous angler. “We were the first ones as far as I can tell who were fishing off the (Hudson) canyon,” he said, of the drop-off 100 miles off the Jersey shore. “We were heading down to Atlantic City for the school tuna tournament. Nobody caught marlin, but we came back with a half dozen white marlin in the boat. Everybody’s wondering where the heck we got those? In those days, there were no charts, so you were dragging around blind. Plus, you never saw another sportfishing boat out there to ask.”

Fish-finding aids in the 1960s included a fathometer to see the bottom. The Magnus was also equipped with a hand-held device called a Mechanical Bathythermograph Observation System. The tube-shaped tool was attached to a long cord, which was dropped overboard. As the gadget sunk, a needle scratched a line on an inner glass piece to represent water temperature. “It never really was a big help,” DeGutis said. “You had to stop and drift while you’re messing around with it. What helped was looking for changes in water color. I’d fish the edge of the canyon, and sometimes I’d work all the way out to the 1,000 fathom curve.”

DeGutis also worked on the Brielle-based charter boat, the Margaret K, run by Capt. Howard Meyer and most often chartered by corporate executives in the hunt for inshore school tuna and bluefish. He worked with Capt. Sonny Barr too, on the 42 Rybovich, Blue Fin IV, owned by Ferd Roebling, a founding member of the Manasquan River Marlin & Tuna Club. It was freelancing on the Blue Fin that DeGutis first traveled to Montauk and caught his first swordfish.

“What I liked most about freelancing was being able to go places,” he said. “Inshore working on a charter boat catching blue fish every day wasn’t too exciting. I’d rather be catching a white marlin, or giant tuna or running all over the ocean looking for swordfish. That’s like hunting and fishing at the same time.”

The Frisky Lady Years: Success on the Tournament Circuit

In 1964, at age 29, Capt. Ben cast off on a nearly two-decade career running Jack Willits’ Frisky Lady’s. The fishing year started in Palm Beach for the sailfish season. One day in the early 1970s, Willits’ father, Harris Willits called DeGutis to ask about the fishing. “I told him it’s slow, but it will pick up,” he said. “Then I asked how flexible he was. He says he’s retired and can break loose anytime. So, when the fishing got good, I called him. He’d drive up from his house in Boca Raton, and we’d go fishing. Once, we ran up by Stuart and got 11 sails by 10:30. Harris looked up at me and said, ‘Are you trying to kill me? Let’s go in and have lunch.’ We did. It was neat to have a guy that was that flexible. Usually, somebody makes up their mind a week or two in advance to fish on certain dates and that might be when the fish aren’t biting.”

DeGutis would leave the Palm Beach area at the end of April or early May to run the Frisky Lady up north. There would be a stop in Cape Hatteras, fishing for a month or so, and fishing off New Jersey and New England from late June until Labor Day. “One Fourth of July, we fished down in Jersey and went way south,” DeGutis said. “I forget what the Loran line was; it was a little chink in the drop-off, and we caught a blue marlin. Another year, we were on our way Northeast and were off the Fishtails Canyon by Montauk and caught a swordfish on the Fourth.”   

The Frisky Lady, with DeGutis at the helm and Willits in the cockpit, fished the Nantucket Anglers Club Tournament each summer. They won it once, usually placed on the podium and one year even picked up the hard luck trophy. “We hadn’t seen many swordfish that year coming up to the tournament, but a few minutes before fishing time on the way out that first morning I saw one,” said DeGutis. “There were a lot of boats coming behind us. We decided to keep an eye on it until it was time and then try and bait it. Jack says, ‘I don’t get that many shots, let’s bait it.’ So, we did, and it bit right away. We were hooked up when I called the committee boat and told them we had a sword on and that we knew it wouldn’t count since we hooked it ahead of time. We soon caught it, but for the rest of the tournament, no one caught a single swordfish. That’s how we won the Hard Luck trophy.”

A Memorable Career Highlight: Massachusetts State Record White Marlin

Another history-making day out of Nantucket for the Frisky Lady team, was July 30, 1982. Angler Ted Naftzger reeled in a 131-pound white marlin. The catch is still in the books as the Massachusetts state record.  A few years earlier, in 1979, the Frisky Lady was one of 75 U.S.-based boats that traveled to the Hemingway International Yacht Club, outside Havana, for the Hemingway International Billfish Tournament. “We caught some fish, including a 311-pound blue marlin, but not enough to be in the top guns,” DeGutis said. “The fishing grounds for white and blue marlin weren’t far offshore to the west of Havana. I remember there was a guy on a loudspeaker calling out the boats as they came in. I’ll never forget those words and the way he said them, ‘Here is the Frisky Lady. Let’s see what she has captured today!’”

Transition to Shore: A New Chapter in the Marine Industry

Raising two little girls meant Capt. Ben wanted to work closer to home. He worked at Wayne Roman Yacht Sales in Singer Island. Then, when his daughters were older, he went back out on the water to freelance captaining. One boat he spent a lot of time on was Jason Brown’s 49-foot Monterey, Tuna Tango.  DeGutis ran the Tuna Tango to St. Thomas in 1998, where Brown earned Top Angler with five blue marlin releases in the USVI Open/Atlantic Blue Marlin Tournament.

“We went to Venezuela after that,” DeGutis said. “I remember two days in a row the angler we had caught a Grand Slam, a blue marlin, white and sail. He didn’t get a slam on the third day and was very disappointed. I said to myself, ‘This guy will probably fish the rest of his life and never get another Grand Slam. He didn’t know how lucky he was. That’s how good the fishing was in Venezuela.”

The final boat DeGutis ran until he retired at age 78, was Adam Sanford’s 62-foot Merritt, Adam’s Folly.

A Legacy of Excellence: The IFGA Tommy Gifford Award

In 2021, he received the IFGA’s Tommy Gifford Award. Of his lifetime of sportfishing accomplishments, DeGutis says he is most proud of Jack Willits’ record swordfish catch. He also tells a great ‘rest of the story’ fish tale to that momentous catch.

The Rest of the Story: A Humorous End to a Record-Setting Day

“I remember we sold it to The Club Car restaurant in Nantucket,” he said. “They had it outside with big silver cups on each end piled with ice with a big sign that read ‘get your world record swordfish for dinner tonight.’ We went there for dinner and Jack paid the bill. So, he says, ‘This doesn’t seem fair.’ I said ‘Jack, what are you talking about?’ He says that I just sat there and ran the boat, while he was the one out there cranking and working his ass off to catch the swordfish. Then, he says, he bought us his swordfish for dinner. I said, ‘Jack, I may have got a few bucks from selling it, but you got all the glory.’”