Thats a Wrap!

On 27^th December 2012 at 5:30am, Wayne, Hugo, David and I launched “Galavant” off Richards Bay. We were looking for marlin which seemed to be quite abundant. Wayne headed out to the 100m mark where I set 3 lures and 2 halfbeaks. There were a lot of boats fishing for marlin as the weather conditions were perfect. With all these boats looking for marlin, a trend could be seen and 400m seemed to be the place to be. Wayne worked the 300-500m depth concentrating on the plankton line that formed in the area.

By 11am, several boats had reported released fish and others were fighting. Our turn had to be close. At 11:30, as we moved out the plankton, a really nice blue marlin of around 200kg launched itself out the water and piled on the left long. The rigger popped and 80 Tiagra smoked off. As lines were being cleared, the fish went ballistic on surface taking a lot of line. Hugo strapped into the Black Magic harness and Wayne backed up to recover line. About 100m out the back, the marlin made a few more jumps but something was wrong... it looked tailwrapped. The line angle went down and down as we backed up, trying to put as much line on the reel before the fish went down. By the time the line angle was straight up and down, the drag was already on 14kg. The tempo of the fight slowed and line left the reel at a slow but constant pace. We upped the drag to just under full and but it was too late. The fish had died and sank to the bottom in 350m and only swell pulling line off. With the drag at sunset we turned with what little current there was to try gain momentum and lift the fish. The wind had picked up since we hooked up and was now pushing the boat forward quickly causing us to lose line. Knowing the wind was going to get worse and with it our chances of lifting the fish, I donned a pair of gloves and assisted the line out the water as Hugo wound onto the reel. Wayne did a great job to kept the boat steady in the swell and wind and after 20 minutes, we managed to lift the fish about 70m. It seemed as if the fish was slowly coming up when all of a sudden, under little pressure, the line parted near the fish and Hugo was left to retrieve about 200m of slack line. After working hard for this fish, our efforts went unrewarded... but hey, that’s marlin fishing for you... It was not the first marlin we had lost and it is definitely not the last one we are going to lose. Let’s hope the next fight goes according to plan.