Raising the Dead

On 24^th December, I joined Frans van Rensburg, his son Jako and two of his friends on “Trinity” for a day on the water. We left the dock at 4:30am and headed straight out until the water was a deep blue colour. The lures went out and Jako trolled the area for a while. It was very quiet and so we headed north. The sun had broken through the clouds and the lures were looking great. Something had to happen! About an hour later, at 9am, the flatline was eaten by a hungry Dorado. This was brought to the boat and unceremoniously gaffed. Jako worked the area and soon after, we had a small marlin chasing the long port lure. It swatted the lure a few times, but never hooked up.

Jako found a current line and trolled north along the deep edge. At 11:45, there was a huge splash on the long starboard lure and the rigger popped. The 80Lbs rig took off and a big Blue marlin took to the air. We all grabbed rods and cleared the deck as the fish absolutely smoked off. Jako backed up hard trying to keep up with the fish, but it was too fast. Moments later, a movement to the starboard side caught my eye. It was our marlin, greyhounding parallel to us ... in the opposite direction! There was about 500m of line out when the fish slowed down and we could regain line.

Hennie regained most of the line, but the marlin had other ideas and sounded. We could do nothing but watch as the fish took more than half the spool of line. After two hours, the fish stopped and we could only assume it was dead. We were in 500m of water with a dead fish lying on the bottom... not a good situation to be in! We tried every manoeuvre in the book, but the fish would not budge.

Out of pure desperation, I put on a pair of gloves and grabbed the line. There was some tension, but I could pull it up. Slowly ... very slowly, the dead fish started to lift off the bottom. I continued hand-lining the fish while Hennie took up the slack. After 100m, Jako took over from me. So we took turns raising the fish until the elastic from the rigger came out the water. There was a huge amount of tension on the line now and almost zero stretch. I handed over to Jako, warning him not to put too much pressure on the line. Everything was going well and the fish was about 15m under the boat when a swell unexpectedly caused the boat and the fish to suddenly pull apart. All I can recall is Jako’s hand shooting towards him as the line popped. The big fish slowly sank back to the depths. By now it was after 3pm and the battle had taken its toll on the entire crew, physically and mentally.

We decided to up lines and head for home. This day showed us how important a good team is. Even though we did not manage to get the fish, we felt we had done our best.