Friday, April 3, 2015

Patrick's Black Marlin


After a few weeks without doing any fishing, this week has been fairly busy.

On Tuesday we set off just after 7am making our way to the a sea mount, after a while of not seeing any fish & bird life, we headed off to try the Koro sea mount

As we made our way across, there still wasn't any sign of any bird life, it was starting to get pretty boring & it didn't look as anything was going to surface.

Suddenly one of the lines on the outrigger went off, all on board suddenly come to life, & there was finally bird life, what ever it was dropped the line, a few minutes later it goes off again, & again the line goes dead.

Third time lucky it hooks up & the reel starts to scream  & line peels out, now we see what it is as a big Black Marlin starts to do jumps while taking out more line.

Slowly Patrick is able to bring in line, then another run this time just about spooling us, we slowly start to back up on it.
This continues for a hour & half, at one time we thought we had lost it as Patrick said there wasn't anything on the line, but the fish was now swimming towards us.

Panic on board as the fish now looks like going under the boat, quickly we put the boat ahead, & start to work the fish closer to the boat.

Patrick is a strong 6.7ft man so thankfully able to work the fish in a bit at a time, it got close to the boat a few times then took off again.

Finally the  fish was by the boat, it rolled over on it's back, at this stage we knew it was dead  so release it wasn't a option,  finally the flying gaff was put in, now the fun of bringing the fish onto the duck board began, another gaff was put into the fish as a added precaution 

While trying to lift the fish the gaff came off, oh no, lucky Terry had attached a rope to the tail, very quickly the gaff went back in & more ropes were attached.

Finally after  a long while the fish was on the duck board, the waves kept pushing the fish under the duck board making it harder to pull up. Thankfully Patrick & Toby (6.4ft) were both strong men.

It took 6 men to carry the fish off the boat & onto a truck to take to Namale Resort. the feed back was the resort served  it up to the guest & staff & it was enjoyed by all.