Word on the street is the inshore fish are gone. Rumour has it there’s the odd one lingering on the 18 mile but if we wanted a marlin we had to go heavy tackle (+200m). I’ve never been out there but we were willing to give it a shot.
We hit the water about 4:40 and found it bloody perfect. Nearly dead flat so we hauled butt like a pair of hoons out to the banks running the assumption we had more money for fuel then time. We dropped our usual spread and trolled north with no success. We marked bait and a few decent marks but nothing wanted to eat.
About 8:45 we were talking about heading wider when the shotgun went off. Porter hauled in a 8-10lb Mac tuna which was pretty melodramatic but made a decent belly flap bait for later in the day. Being as the rods were all in we ran east another 6 miles until we hit 200m of water. We also found a current line so we deployed the spread and trolled east in it.
Pretty quick we passed a floating bucket and had three lines go down. All three hooked up and three baby mahi found their way into my kill tank.
We trolled a little further and in about 320m of water we had a triple attack of marlin. The shotgun fired first then we saw two fish come and strike each corner. My corner hooked up, the port corner missed. Porter was handling the shotgun, I left mine in the rod holder and started clearing lines. Then they jumped and omg what a pair of horses we had. Big, big fish, both of them. They both jumped at the same time which was picture bloody perfect. Four or five meters apart and crossed each other in the air. They also crossed lines which wasn’t a problem because we saw it but we recognised we had a problem with a double. Luckily by the time I had cleared the other six lines one had unhooked itself.
I had turned the boat towards porters fish as I was clearing lines but by the time I was done he had about 800m of line out and the fish was jumping all over the place. We started to chase and the fish went deep. He then battled the fish for a little over two hours without seeing it. To say he was exhausted would be an understatement. I obviously couldn’t help on the rod but I kept myself hydrated with beer and encouraged him through his struggle. Man he was working that fish... or maybe it was working him.
Two hours and fifteen minutes in he finally came back up to surface and it appeared we just had to drive over and leader him. We were on the mono topshot and within 30m of him when the line popped. The 200 lb leader had worn through from his bill.
It was a tough break but I can accept a chaffed leader before a failed knot, straightened hook or pulled crimp. It was a big, big fish. North of 250kg easily.
We put the spread back out and kept trolling for the shelf. At 410-420m we had another triple strike and again two stuck. Once again the one in the rod holder got unhooked as I cleared the gear then I took the other rod from porter and settled into the fight. This being a smaller fish around that 110 kg mark the fight wasn’t to hard and I’m sure it helped being as hydrated as I was.
That’ll go down as my first striped marlin.
We trolled out to the 1000m mark just so we could say we did but we didn’t see any point in going deeper.
We then turned back and started for home. Around the 220m mark on the way back in after almost an hour with no action the shotgun fired again. Porter brought it down and I cleared the lines and teasers. He was in for another fairly gruelling fight although nothing like the one before. He brought in his first stripe which should of been in the 150kg range based on length and girth.
At that point, being as the gear was already in the boat we made the run back in and called it a day.
Oh yea, the chickens.
