SHOW AND TELL: Taj holds up the same Kona Clone he used to catch his first marlin in 1965.

I'M NOT MUCH OF A FLYER. Bouncing along in a 13-seat, one-engine prop job above the mountains of Costa Rica, I can feel the collar of my shirt dampening with sweat and my fingers going white from gripping the armrest. To keep sane, I say to myself over and over, In about an hour, you'll be fishing with one of the greatest blues musicians in the world.

About two months earlier, I had received a call from someone identifying himself as Taj Mahal. It took a moment for this reality to sink in as the caller told me about his love of fishing, especially marlin. Although a bit surprised to be talking shop with a blues legend, I wasn't shocked. I fish for a living, and in marinas, you meet all types of people from carpenters to CEOs. Taj wanted me to fish with him and, by February, I was flying south for the Taj Mahal Fishing Blues tournament.

After a quick circle of the village of Golfito, the plane makes a relatively smooth landing. I can’t wait to get the hell out. I hitch a ride on a panga across the bay to Roy’s Zancudo Lodge, where I’m scheduled to meet Taj—but, due to tropical travel snafus, I end up being four hours late for Day One of this three-day angling showdown, and Taj’s tournament boat has already left. When it comes to fishing, Taj waits for no one. And in this case, he isn’t just fishing for fun—he’s fishing for a cause.

I'M NOT SURE HOW TO ACT when I finally meet the man at an open-air bar. I feel small. First, because at 6 feet, 4 inches tall, Taj towers over me, and second, because I know this man is a living legend. At 61 years of age, Taj Mahal is a man of the world. He’s played the blues for nearly a half century, speaks five languages, has mastered a laundry list of instruments and traveled the globe.

“The next morning, as we catch herring for bait, the conversation flows from organic gardening to jamming with Jimi Hendrix—and, of course, to fishing. Listening to Taj’s rich, melodious voice, I feel like a little kid watching Sesame Street for the first time—I’m glued to him.

Born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in Harlem, Taj Mahal grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and got his first taste of saltwater fishing as a teenager chasing striped bass on the East Coast. The thrill of the catch made a big impact on him. “I was always reading about the saltwater action,” he says. “I’d pick up whatever magazines I could find. I would look at these pictures of men with huge fish of all types, and I’d ask myself, ‘How did they do that?’ I was amazed.”

A self-taught guitar player, Taj also taught himself how to fish. He read books, talked to anglers and just went out and learned by trial and error. In 1965, his career took him west to California. Once settled, he booked a five-day trip out of San Diego to learn how to fish for tuna. He followed that up with a seven-day, a nine-day and then a 14-day trip. “I came back with a ton of fish,” he says. “I started in San Diego and drove all the way up to San Francisco, giving fish to every person I knew.”

In San Francisco, he found a small tackle shop and went inside to rap with the owner about the local bite. “There was this huge lure hanging on the wall,” Taj says. “It was real old. Nobody wanted it. I asked the man what type of fish would eat a lure that big. ‘Marlin,’ he said. He took the lure down off the wall, and it left this shadow ‘cause it had been there so long. I bought it, and I ended up catching my first marlin on that lure—in Fiji.”

I can’t help but notice that Taj brought along three duffel bags overflowing with lures, leader material, rubber bands, pliers and everything else you might find rolling around the cockpit of a charter boat. As he speaks, he reaches into one of his tackle bags and produces that very same lure from Fiji. Known as a Kona Clone, the lure has a slanted head and a long yellow-and-green skirt. Taj holds it up with a fat grin on his face.

IT’S ONLY NATURAL that Taj Mahal has brought his love of fishing to the lives of blues musicians. But the idea of hosting a charitable fishing tournament didn’t come about until 1997, when blues legend B.B. King introduced Taj to Tim Duffy. When he was a graduate student in the late 1980s, Duffy began traveling the South with a camera and a tape recorder to document America’s “roots” music. Most of the musicians he met were living in poverty and largely forgotten. So Duffy developed the Music Maker Relief Foundation to help roots musicians get back on their feet. When Taj heard some of Duffy’s recordings of these obscure artists, the blues master immediately wanted to help. “We’re living a charmed life as opposed to what the blues is all about,” Taj says. “The way some of these musicians were living, that’s the way the blues really is.”

“We help in many different ways,” Duffy says. “Sometimes it’s cash, but our CD program is one of our most successful. It’s like that old saying, ‘Take a man fishing and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ With our CD program, we record the artists and provide CDs for them to sell at gigs.”

Now in its 10th year, Music Maker has released more than 50 CDs and raised more than $2.5 million. The group is also the beneficiary of the Taj Mahal Fishing Blues Tournament in Costa Rica. Last February, Taj and the Music Maker folks put together an ensemble of artists and about 30 anglers to fish in the all-release tournament. The event raised close to $100,000—money that will fund operating costs, recording equipment and everything from new shoes to dietary supplements for struggling musicians.

FISHING, MUSIC, LIFE—it’s all integrated,” Taj tells me, as I keep an eye on the spread of lures behind the boat. “Fishing is an optimistic kind of thing. You fish if you’re an optimist.”

Taj points out some high-flying frigate birds and a pod of hungry shearwaters circling above a school of slap-happy skipjack tuna, and his optimism begging to infect me too. “You know there’s something big pushing that bait up,” Taj says. As my adrenaline pumps, the captain motors us over to the commotion. Taj puts on some gloves and stands by the rod ready for action.

Pay Day: Landing this marlin nets cash for struggling American blues musicians.

Like clockwork, the bill of a sailfish appears behind one of the splashing teasers and the fish gnaws at the lure as if it were a cigar butt. Taj calmly grabs a live herring out of the bait well, bridles the small fish with a hook and drops it back to the lit-up fish.

With the reel whirring in freespool, he feeds the bait back waiting for the perfect moment to kick it into gear and come tight with the sailfish. The 100-pound beauty tail-walks across the ocean for about 20 minutes before Taj manages to bring it alongside the boat for a quick photo and release.

“Fishing’s the great equalizer,” Taj says. “Anybody can do it. It doesn’t matter what you look like or talk like. Music is much the same way. Anybody can enjoy it.”

TOWARD THE END OF THE DAY, Jimmy Herring, a guitarist from Atlanta who now plays with The Dead, hooks into the fish of his life. Word of the hookup reverberates over the VHF, and we can see the boat in the distance giving chase.

“It was huge—just unbelievable,” Herring tells me back at the dock, his arms stretched out like a little kid showing off the size of a catch. “I’m used to catching bass and crappie!”

The crew released the fish and estimated its size at 500 pounds. Although Taj is happy for Herring, I can spot a twinge of jealousy on his face.

The tournament ends with an impromptu concert for all the townspeople, tournament participants and anyone else with an ear for good music. As the musicians begin to tune up on the small stage at the Zancudo Beach Club, I pop open another cerveza and think back on the event.

"Fishin' Blues"--Taj Mahal

No one had fished for money or notoriety. They had fished for the blues: So an elderly musician could get a new pair of guitar strings, or pay his phone bill so he could call his doctor. No one worried about people cheating or lying about the catches, because it really didn’t matter. They fished for blues music and, more importantly, its spirit.

After a passing shower cools off the muggy night air, the musicians, who include Sammy Blue, Daniel “Mudcat” Dudeck, Derek Trucks and Jimmy Herring, go to work. Late in the night, Taj Mahal walks on stage wearing his trademark wide-brim hat and Hawaiian shirt and picks up his guitar. As he starts to pluck the intro to “Fishin’ Blues,” one of his signature tunes, goose bumps rise on my skin. Then the blues-master-marlin-fisherman begins to sing:

“Betcha goin’ fishin’ all of your time, baby’s gone fishing too. Bet your life, your sweet life, catch more fish than you….”