Striped Marlin

Tuesday:

An amazing day of fishing is all I can say.  I’ll start at the launch and go from there. We were at the boat launch by 6:30 AM and picked up two live cabellito baits for our day of fishing. We had heard that live bait was the way to go but since we had never tried it we bought just the minimum. We motored out and dropped our lures over the side.  John chose to run ballyhoo on a new lure he bought from Jim at the fishing tackle store. I put on a lure that I bought; it looked like a flying fish so I figured it might be the lure de jour for this trip.

We were out about a mile from the jetty when I got and hit and the reel started screaming. John’s rig joined in the choirs seconds later. From the pull on the rod we both knew that we had hooked barrilette, exciting but at the same time disappointing.  We brought them in and released both, continuing on our away.    We dropped our rigs back into the water and immediately had a repeat performance. We checked our gear and refrained from putting them back in the water, running out over the barrilete into deeper water.

Once we met up with the other boats we found a spot and baited up the cabellito.  We dropped them down and let them swim. After a while of drifting we reeled up the bait and hooked on the two ballyhoo set ups and started to cruise.

Nothing hit and we kept at it until we needed to head back to the jetty. As we trolled, John saw some big swirls on the top of the water and we headed towards them. I got a hit on my ballyhoo but it was a short strike and a marlin got away with my bait.

Cruising on we spotted another big swirl so we swooped by and bam, John had a big hit. He let it run and then set the hook and the fight was on. He got it to the boat and I grabbed it by the bill and then conked it on the head with Grandma's Hammer. We pulled in a 130 lb. striped marlin. What a catch.

My ballyhoo short struck. Bummer!

John with his 7 ft. 5 in. striped marlin. 

Wednesday:

We hit the ramp a bit late today, the live bait boys were out of bait, bummer!  John motored us out and we worked the jetty for a couple of bait fish. The draw of the open water was strong so we put on our best lures and headed out.

As we met the rest of the fishing fleet the bait boys caught us and sold us two cabellito that they had caught at the jetty just for us. We paid the boys and thanked them and they were off.

John and I got our bait rigs out and John handed me a cabellito and I looked down putting it on the hook. When I looked up and out into the water below the boat I could see several big striped marlin circling below "Get the bait in the water!" I shouted, "They're all around us!"  We immediately lowered the bait down and within seconds my reel was screaming. John's reel joined in and all havoc broke loose.

At this point, we had either one of two scenarios going. We either each had a marlin, or the one mariln had grabbed both of our bait and was running with them. John swears that while we fought the fish he saw two marlin jumping at the same time, right next to each other. 

We fought the fish and when we finally got them close to the boat, we had one fish hooked by both of our rigs.  John had hooked it in the mouth and I had it hooked hard in the gill plate. My thoughts are that if we had hooked two marlins, they must have crossed up and in doing so my hook came out of my fish and reset in John's. In any case, we were able to get the fish in, unhook it and then release it to fight again. 

The entire episode happened within minutes of our getting to the fishing grounds. Everyone around us must have thought we were something.

With our one marlin caught and our live bait gone we then turned to dragging bait and ballyhoo. We tracked several marlin jumps but didn't get any strikes. 

The wind came up and we started heading back toward the jetty. On our way in we had three strikes on our ballyhoo. Two of which were hooked enough that the marlins jumped and ran.  They shredded our bait and both shook free, but it was a real hoot hooking up with the three of them.

John releasing the marlin we both caught.

Whales having fun!