Jalil's Marlin

It was a lovely calm morning when we arrived at the Copra Shed Dock about 5.30, for our morning charter.

We had spoken to a friend who was also leaving for his return to Nadi on his Black Watch fishing boat, about where the fish were running.

He had made the comment there wasn't anything at the bottom end Sea Mount, when he came through on Friday, so once past the entrance, we headed out towards the Top Mount, to see if anything was working.

To our disappointment there wasn't any sign of fish around, & no birds to be seen, so started the runs up & down around the fad.

Fortunatly  we finally got a hit, it was a Mahi Mahi,  this was brought into the boat without too much trouble by Oliver, then it was back to the trolling around the fad.

We were just talking about going to the bottom mount as nothing was happening, when a line went screaming out, a few seconds later I saw the first of many jumps, it was a Marlin.

Well at that point everything seemed to happen, Jalil was in the chair & all the other lines were being brought in, then another big run,  this time we all got to see the fish as it jumped out of the water.

Jalil handled the rod like a professional working the fish in a little at a time, sometimes the Marlin would take a run & take out all the line that Jalil had worked so hard at bringing in.

At one time I thought we were going to loose it at it jumped out of the water a few times then took off peeling off lots more line.
Finally it was at the boat, on its last jump the line got caught around its tail, so Jalil had to work harder to  bring it in tail first.

It was all  hands on deck to help bring in onto the duck board, finally it was up.
Just after it was tired up on the duck board, Terry went to take the lure out, to his surprise the lure just fell out, we were so lucky it hadn't happened earlier.

                               

Now we had something to bring back to shore for dinner.

And they had some kind words for us once we got back.

Terry and Trevina,

We had an absolutely fantastic time. Skipper Terry and his better half were awesome and the catch of a large black marlin (reputed to be 120kg, but who is counting), two mahi mahi and one skipjack were an experience of a lifetime. Locals were green with envy about the marlin (see attached photos) and we will remember this for a long time to come. Thanks for the wonderful outing.

Oliver, Jalil (the marlin expert) and Scott