What a strange day on the ocean. Fished on the 430 in 350-370’ and had steady action all day. First fish of the day was a decent maui that snapped an Owner Jobu hook. I had heard of this happening, but this was the first time I had seen it. We caught 9 mauis, with 4 decent fish and 5 smaller ones. Saw lots of billfish behind the boat and a few free floppers. First one was a lazy blue marlin attack on the squid chain. He lit up and charged at the flat, but didn’t eat and then faded off by the right short. About 5 minutes later we saw another one of the same size. Could have been the same fish. He inhaled the bridge pole and pulled drag for about 10 seconds. As I was about to hand the rod down the hook let go. Oh well. We then proceeded to put on a clinic on how not to catch sailfish. We missed 5 in a row. 3 jumped off after a couple jumps. 1 didn’t really eat. And 1 mauled a bait. In the middle of that we had another blue marlin come up on the left long and never eat.
As if that wasn’t enough excitement, we finally had a sailfish come in and get glued on. He must have not been as wise as his buddies. As soon as midgiemullet deftly angled him to the boat and we let him go, one of the guys had a seizure. It was no joke and it was a hair raising experience. We pulled lines and headed back. About 45 minutes later he was back to normal, and by the time we reached Tolers, shortly before 4 pm, everything appeared to be okay, but he was heading to the hospital to get checked out. We were very fortunate and everyone on the boat did a great job of staying calm and helping however possible. This was a first for me in my days on the ocean. I was very glad to have many good friends in other boats that were ready to help and I was also glad to have a satellite phone to call for help if necessary. I strongly recommend any of you who fish offshore purchase one. They are too inexpensive at this point not to have one. Mine is Globalstar and it does have intermittant service, but always seems to acqu
