Harry´s first Black Marlin
It’s been an odd year so far with unpredictable weather patterns, warmer than usual water and, at times, some slower than usual fishing in shallow (albeit good out wide), however , amongst other species we have been getting a good numbers of Blacks, including one which was epic as we caught 81 year old Harry´s first Black Marlin.
There is a Bazaruto peak season for Black Marlin, that’s absolutely sure and surely that’s when the vast majority of the big girls are caught, but Black Marlin can certainly can be caught year-round and at any given time one fishes’ the Archipelago.
We have caught them year-round, every month of the year, even really big fish in March, April, May and June, on what is supposed to be the off season and despite the low effort this goes on and on every year.
Here´s a link to some good Black Marlin fishing in the so called off season from last year…
And here´s a couple pics and reports from a few we released within a couple weeks by the end of April…
Harry´s first Black Marlin
Last week of April we had Harry Ferguson visiting us for a few days of light tackle fishing.
Despite having known Harry for many years during his and Collen´s various trips to the Archipelago, this was the first time he fished here. Due to some bad weather, we were only able to put in a couple of days.
We fished aboard the 38ft Drop Your Rods out of Vilankulos and decided to fish up north on the first day which was quite choppy to start with but eased out as the day progressed.
Although we were targeting general game fish on light tackle, we always got a couple of #50´s out there with something more substantial in case a welcome surprise shows up.
And that´s exactly what happen on the first bite of the day when a feisty Black took the long rigger Ilander with a horse ballyhoo and we hooked up to a feisty Black that after the first jump went down and never showed up again.
It was really hard work and we had to let go of the leader twice before finally having the fish subdued by the boat. No wonder as the fish was foul hooked on the side peck…
What a great start and fish for Harry Ferguson on his first ever Black Marlin aboard the 38ft Drop Your Rods. Harry does not look, act or seems to be 81 years old, and he was absolutely brilliant in the chair especially on this hard, deep fighting foul hooked fish…if memory serves me right, he was the oldest (youngest) chap to have released a Marlin with us…
Well done mate!
Some Yellowfin Tuna, skipjack, bonnies and lots of cuta complimented the rest of the two day´s…
Nice fish on Vamizi and a couple Sailfish…
Round about the same time my boys at Bazaruto where running VAMIZI with a couple groups and in between the light tackle stuff where they caught many nice YFT, wahoo and some other species along with a good size Black Marlin of around 400 pounds…
Carl Jankowitz – one more Black to the tally…
Straight after we had our good friend and regular Carl Jankowitz who needs no introduction and who as caught many Blacks aboard VAMIZI with us. We had some flat calm beautiful weather but the bite seemed to slow down during his days with us.
However, in between some jigging, popping and ultra-light spinning sessions we pulled some lures and Carl added another Bazaruto Black Marlin to his count…
After that and a spell of bad weather we found a good bite from Blues out wide so spent most of the time there although there were also some Sailfish to be found inshore…
Ski boat magazine cover
…of the best Bazaruto Black Marlin we caught last season. This was a proper one which we estimated at 1 100 lbs which we released aboard BIG BOB in early November and which I was lucky enough to be on the hot seat.
You can read the story here…
Thank you Duarte!
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