Textbook Style Marlin Release with Andrew Gillespie
It is always good to get a fish early on your charter and the Black Marlin we got for Andrew early morning on the 13th of May, the first day of the week charter was literally a Text-Book Style Marlin Release.
We woke up before dawn for a coffee/tea in the dark and made our way to the boat at the first signs of light. Fire up the engines and get ready for the extreme 8-minute run to the fishing grounds.
As we exited the mouth, conditions were perfect with a light Southeasterly breeze, blue water at a 26c and loads of bait around. If one did not know, we could swear we were in October, right in the middle of our peak Heavy Tackle Black Marlin Season.
We put the lines out just before N.1 pinnacle reef.
Bait!
An Ilander-Ballyhoo combination on the shotgun, two lures long on the riggers and a couple bait sticks with some Williamson Speed Pro´s and Pulsator Mini eye daisy chains.
A few minutes later as we were between pinnacle n.1 and n.2, there goes one of the daisy chains (that would catch 80% of our baits for the week) and we pick up a perfect 4-kilo Yellowfin Tuna.
In the tuna lube live bait system.
Bring in all the rods.
Gun the boat and put the bait out as we got to just under 50 meters of water.
We slow tacked perpendicular to the 2-knot Northerly current and settled in for the long wait.
Andrew was on chair duty and we had already set him up on the chair and harness the previous afternoon.
Felt good to have the first bait in the water at sunrise.
Tacked to 120 meters and back again.
Got to 65 meters and back deep again.
At the 84-meter mark the bait goes deep and nervous and the elastic is ripped out of Andrew´s hand.
Free Spool. Short Drop. Come up slowly. Line tightens. Starts screaming off.
Fish jumps!!!
Yeahhhhh! Hookup!
Textbook style!
Within the first hour of fishing, we are hooked up to the first Marlin of the trip.
We chased and Andrew, as Warren had told me, was an absolute beast on the chair, picking up line as fast as I could chase and he no time at all we were on top of it.
Fish goes down, push up the drag just a tad above the strike button.
That does the trick.
Reverse the boat hard and its 10 minutes and we got the leader.
Justino grabs it.
Caught!
Textbook style Marlin release with Andrew Gillespie on the rod
He’s still green and has not yet got the confidence to take wraps – but we will get there!
The fish jumps away and he lets it go. All good!
Always good to enjoy those leader jumps right by the boat.
Back up again, Andrew is pumping and a couple seconds later Justino grabs it again.
But, the fish is also still green and
once again he lets it go.
We turn the boat around and in less than a minute have the leader again.
This time for good.
Beautiful colors on that fish in the early morning sunlight.
Release!
Quick pic and time to say goodbye to a perfectly caught textbook style Marlin release within the first couple of hours of the first day.
The amazing part was that the next morning was an exact copy of the first….just this time the fish pulled the hook by the boat.
But that’s another story for when we come back to and report that great week of fishing aboard Strenue in Mid May 2021…
Rock on´….
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