Striped Marlin on a Stella!
The fish on the reef had been acting strangly over the last 3 days, all fish were wary of something and i couldnt put my finger on it. Everytime I steamed over the reef looking for kings all the soundings were down 30m on what they normally are - it gave me a kind of eirie feeling....like when u leave the old skippy in the bait tank and going away for the week
I had seen this once before when i first started fish, right about the time Carl had his mammoth epic battle with a 400kg Mako. A big red mark confirmed what i had suspected..He's back!
These boys were keen jiggers so 3 jigged and one live baited. plenty of hook ups and plenty of gear failures too, these lads were getting introduced to aldie stylez kings and soon had them using my gear and finally a few fish were caught and released. Things were a little slow to be fair, the ever reliable livie had little action, the jigs stopped catching and it was time to do two livies. Ive always caught more with two and i was pretty sure this would get the fish feeding again, just that little bit of extra stress in the water.
I been harping to too the decky about marlin all week, dropping a beast of a blue and a stripie, didnt take the big gear out for the first time in ages, stupid marlin...kings are where its at!...i had lost my focus and it was time to get back to earth..just like magic the stella started howling and the line came strait to the surface.
"MARLIN! MARLIN! "...i cried
"yeah right" said the decky
It was a beautiful thing...a magic sight if you will....One very very angry marlin bounding across the surface...just magnificent!
"UP UP UP!", i squeeled to the crew and they wound like the clappers, to be honest i diddnt even look back to see if everyone was up, only took them about 3 seconds and all you could hear was the roar of the yammie, the howl of the stella and the boys amped all yahooing - "tu meke!, yeeeehaaaa!, booyaa,wooo hooo!"
We were after it, might as well give it a fair shot chances are its gonna fall off, so lets give it a crack. Scotty was hooked up big time, he had lasted the inital 100m pull of line and was soon at a stalemate with the fish...things setteled down for about 5 mins where we made some good ground back of the fish buy driving up the line, little baby incriments, one step at a time. Both Lee and i were very aware that at anytime the gear could fail, i mean, 8/0 de coro recurve hook, 3m of trace and leader...there were so many things the fish had in its favour, but it was still on.. scotty was still hooked up ...
"SANITY HOOKED UP" i announced to the world, yeah thats right!! SANITY.!!...woo hoo!....sorry, i was excited, it was exciting, hooked up on a livie rig....rahahahhahah!
Scotty was tiring by this stage, sweat was pouring off the poor boy, arms shaking...
"you ok" ..asked Lee
"if you cant hold it, let a mate have a shot, you can always tag back in"...wise words
Scott chose wisely, he was beat from the first run, Ryan stepped in and Mark continued videoing
Ryans height and freshness gave us the advantage for about 30 seconds and the fish flicked him the bird and went scooting across othe ocean, diddnt jump, just a short blast..."woohoo...ryan was getting railed! Before we started making line back again and a real game of your turn, no my turn ensued..."please dont fall off, please dont fall of"..i preyed...and got out a banana...bugger this is hard work watching..Scotty was ready for more and swapped and. Dont know what the hell was goingon but the fish knew and no sooner had scotty got back the fish decided it was time to collect shellfish and a few snot eels 100m down.
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN he dived, 80m peeled off the stealla while poor scotty did his utmost to stay in control...bloody thing had him beat again! He dug it and and slowly he got the fish to turn..the line angle increased as i pulled back into neautral and a steady stream of line parted. If it was gonna fall of it would have and i knew inside we had a good chance of getting this baby..
"Innkeeper, Sanity"...
"yeah tobes you still hooked up?"
"yeah prickles, but we have a problem, no gaff, whats the chance of you scooting past"
"no worries tobes see u soon"
He had allready dragged one out of the mud this moringing and was about 3 mile away...good bastard that prickles, few tense moments on the vhf as the bloody fish did a charge and massive amounts of aerials directly towards him, phew!...gaff onboard and we survied another obstacle
"your a good bastard prickles, thanks a bunch"..
The fish was beat, the last lot of aerials had him sore, we were still hooked up and it was just under the boat...for about 10mins it just sat there...i dunked the canon D10 and grabbed some primo amateur footage of the fish fining down deep...soooooo cool that little unit.
"righto ryan, time to work bro, lift your game boy, we need this fish back"...like a pro he got the fish up...but he was beat.
For 10 mins we had the fish just out of gaffing range, it was a stubborn one..must have been from the west coast. Up down up down within inches from lee having a shot
"stupid bloody fish" i muttered...gonna have to be brave now!...The PR knot was now back and forwards thru the guides and i could see it starting to wear loose a bit, on closer inspection the top knot had come loose and there was really nothing to worry about...nice pr decky.
Now or never i decided and slowly helped ryan lift the fish holding the trace very carefully...loosing the fish now would surely result in mass suicide by the crew, i couldnt have that!
a few short lifts and the gaff was home...i grabbed the bill and a bit of a crew reshuffle and we dragged the fish over the side and carefully laid it on the deck...a few wet towels is all we had and celebrations all round.
it was ours! Sanity had its first marlin and what a way to do it!
"back to the pin then lads?"...2 more kings and then back thru the ever increasing sloppy conditions to weigh the fish.
so thats what those big red marks are on the fish finder...ill be back!
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