The 'die' command, when presented with an argument not terminated with a newline, appends the location where 'die' was called, along the currently selected filehandle, and the current line number of that file, where available. The tieing is irrelevant; '<$fh> line 119' means that $fh is the currently selected filehandle, and 119 is the last line that was read from that file (it should match $.). 119 does not indicate the number of lines in the file.
Dave.