Pretty day Saturday. Fun-fished mid 400’s.
10: 45am, 260ft, Shawn S. (SS) hooks a very soft bite on the 4th attempt, Islander/bally combo on the way back. One set of jumps, Jeb B. angles for a nice fight on Shimano Tyranos 30, white marlin. Hook pulls on first leader wrap, at 11:05am. ‘Jeb’ John get’s his first marlin on!
11:10am, Swung back through same area for a bonus fish.
11:24am, 275ft, blue marlin charges up the spread from the right dredge/teaser with a half-jump, crashing onto the left flat, circle-hook dink bally rig on Penn squall 60 (think wide-frame TLD 25), light leader sailfish rig. SS hooks then passes off to Brian M the rod for his first shot at a blue. 4-minutes later, leveraging every ounce of the 10lb strike drag, the reel was pretty much apple-cored, with 4/5th spool over the side. Lots and lots of jumps and boat chasing (backwards AND forward) at 3-5 knots, Brian regains most of his spool back.
11:55am, still steady steaming due South @ 3.5 knots with the line straight down, fish & angler still fighting hard back and forth over a 100 yard section of line, we conclude this fish is pretty-much Bahamas-bound.
1:05pm, 1 hour and 40 minutes, we finally work to get a line angle change and steam back full to win back that 100 yds + another 40 yards to the leader. Fish is 190-210lbs. Little small, but perfect.
1:15pm, SS third shot leadering the fish, the 60lb (sailfish) leader breaks 2ft. above the hook. Brian recovers quickly, the fish swims off like he’s late for an appointment. 1:50 total fight time.
1:20 4:00pm, we spend the balance of the day unsuccessfully looking for our sail to close the deal on the illusive Grand slam.
and cursing the fact that my Gopro SD-card is parked in my computer at home, hence the forthcoming cell-phone footage.
edit’s - clarity on hooks & passes.
.jpg)