Stop! Hammer time.

On 9^th January 2021, George and Geraldine Breedt and myself launched “Cyclone” off St Lucia. We were targeting a ladies SA record Black Marlin on 30lbs tackle. There had been the odd fish around so hopefully we would get lucky.

29.1 degree water

We started off running far north near Big Hill area where we put out a few small bait lures. George trolled around the pinnacles but even though there were great showings, nothing was biting. The water was a beautiful dark blue colour, current was ripping at over 3 knots but the water temp was an unreal 29 degrees! This normally makes the fish lethargic so we had our doubts.

Friends of ours caught a small tuna a bit south of us so we headed in that direction. It wasn’t 15 minutes and we went on with a frigate tuna and a small skippy. I rigged the skippy immediately and by the time I got to rigging the frigate, it was dead. At least we had one good bait swimming.

The tide change was at 12:00 so we had a long wait before then so we nursed the skippy for 3 hours in the bath water temp water. We had just gone into the “prime time” when the bait started swimming strangely. It went deep for the first time and the rigger showed very erratic movements. This passed after a few minutes and all returned to normal. Just then, George looked back and saw a marlin swimming just behind the boat. It was just a black colour with no lights on. No matter how much we tried to tease the fish into feeding, it just faded off never to be seen again.

After an hour, the skippy succumbed to the warm water. We spent some time looking for bait, but with no success so we headed home to regroup.

Looking for a bait

On Sunday 10^th January, we were back on the water. It was a similar plan of action but only at 8:45 did we manage to find bait. It was again a skippy, but this time it was a plus size bait of about 6kg. It swam beautifully as we headed out to sea. The water temp was only 27.5 degrees this day and there were heavy dead plankton lines from the previous days hot water. The current had also dropped to almost nothing.

Our bait swam for about 2 hours when it revved and the rigger popped. While feeding some drop back, the reel never took off, do we suspected a false strike. I started retrieving the line by hand while Geraldine manned the reel. The bait was about half way back to the boat when the line was ripped out of my hands and the reel smoked off in free spool. Geraldine fed the fish for a bit then tightened up. The line went straight down and stayed there. The rod was transferred into the standup harness and the fight began. The fish came in pretty easily and soon the leader was out the water. I wrapped it a few times and pulled a decent size hammerhead shark alongside where the leader was cut.

It was the first time that Geraldine had fought a fish on standup gear and she caught her biggest fish. The next time will be a lot easier.

The SW wind started blowing after that, so we headed back to St Lucia.