The blue Marlin is a large game fish

The blue Marlin is a large game fish that naturally lives in saltwater. The average weight of the blue Marlin ranges from 100 to 500 lbs. They have an average body length of six to ten feet and can be found mainly in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. They are well known for their amazing strength, which is only exceeded by the giant bluefin tuna. Once a blue Marlin is landed, the fight will be one you will remember for the rest of you days. The blue marlin has a pointy nose, dark fins and a white belly. They like tropically warm temperatures and are usually found in deep waters. They are easier to catch on clear days, when the water is clear as well.
In the wild the blue marlin feeds on cero, mullet, whole ballyhoo, dolphin, flying fish, bonito, skipjacks, squid, Spanish mackerel and other ocean creatures. Of course any of these or combinations of, will make an excellent bait. The blue marlin prefers hooked bait to artificial lures probably because it can smell a potential meal when the bait is natural. The only problem is that you have to catch the bait before you catch the actual fish! But a solution to this is to buy the bait frozen from bait companies or your local supermarket. The artificial bait the blue marlin seems to prefer are softheads and konas but the most important part is that the bait is one that looks lifelike, alive and appetizing.
Once technique is to catch bonito first, then hooking them through the top of the eye socket. They will now still swim and stay alive for hours making the catch of the blue marlin much easier. All you have to do is lead the bonito to the blue marlin and he will do the rest. When doing this make sure you have at least half the line on your reel still. The blue marlin will fight and try to pull you under. Keep wheeling the line in after the blue marlin has struck the bait. If you notice that the line seems very taunt give the marlin some more line. One of the greatest reasons for loosing the blue marlin is that the line breaks because the fisherman didn’t judge the tension correctly. The hook might also not be anchored enough to support the amazing mass of the blue marlin.
Make sure you have the correct equipment with you to fish for the blue marlin. Because of their exceptionally high weight bundled together with much strength you will need to bring the best equipment available. You need a stand-up class rod, one that is thick enough to withstand large amounts of tension without breaking. Make sure it is elastic and not brittle. Don’t buy a rod that is longer then six feet long or shorter then 5 feet. This type of rod will give you the leverage you need to fish for the blue marlin. The reel should also have a proven drag. Make sure you have at least 400 to 600 feet of line available and use a very strong line. Use a harness to fasten yourself to the boat. The blue marlin is usually averaging a weight of about 300 pounds so you need to make sure that he can’t pull you under. You may also prefer to sit or even use a reel that is attached to the boat so you won’t be in danger.
Usually an ultrasound sensor is used to spot where the blue marlin is. Usually he follows large schools of fish or seabirds and even whales. When you spot a blue marlin following a school of fish, drop the bait behind the schools to get the blue marlin to run into your lure. Do not drive the boat directly into the school of fish or the fish will scatter. Also keep track of the position of the sun to ensure that the sun is facing away from the marlin. He will not be able to see the bait if the sun is behind it. Surface trolling is usually used to fish for blue marlin. A good speed is between eight and ten knots. At eight knots you will hook more fish, but at ten knots more fish are raised. If the sea conditions are rough, go slower then that, since the fish will go slower in that type of weather.
If you feel that you are loosing the fight and you are starting to tire out rather then the fish tiring, it might be a good idea to cut the line. The marlin can hold up for extremely long times and you shouldn’t put yourself into danger since the fight will demand every shroud of your strength and intelligence. Once you have landed the blue marlin it will be once of the best feelings you have experienced as a fisherman. Take a picture, show your friends and freeze many of the juicy steaks in your freezer for many meals to come. And most of all enjoy your experience.

Marlin Fishing Stories

I have trolled for four days in a row without a strike. Actually I am almost sure that once we went out five days in a row without seeing a fish. Oh yes, others were catching fish around us, but we had no strikes for that long. Then of course you had weeks when you would catch a fish on Wednesday, another one on Saturday and another one on Sunday.
I had days, when I had four or five fish behind my baits, and caught none. Days with four or five aggressive strikes and caught none of them. I remember one day, when I fought four different marlins on 30 pound test line and lost them all. I fought each of them for an hour or more each.
All of these fish are different stories and all are great situations, one way or the other. There is nothing like the feeling or coming back to the dock with two or even three blue marlins in your boat. It is even better if you did it by yourself.
It was late August 1984 and Don Jimmy had to take his wife to the doctor, Ivette had to take care of the kids and the day was just perfect for Marlin fishing. I made several calls even tried to lure my dad into joining me, but in the middle of he week, it was hard to find a partner to go fishing. So, I went by myself.

The seas were calm with just a gentle breeze from the Northeast was not even blowing 5 miles an hour. A bright summer day, I had great baits and the feeling that there was a fish for me that day. It was 9:00 AM, when I finally left the dock, and ran Northeast until I was in front of Old San Juan. I must have been 3 miles offshore, when I started trolling. Since I was by myself, I set an 80# test outfit in the starboard rigger and a 50 test outfit on the same side on a flat line behind one teaser, 20 feet behind the transom. My boat’s helm was on the starboard side, so when fishing by myself, that side would be my choice to set my fishing gear. I had a one pound debonned mullet on the 80 and a horse ballyhoo on the 50. I made both of them swim with an occasional skip to the surface caused by steering the boat to the opposite side or by adding a little more speed for a few seconds just to create some effects on the baits.

When you have spent as many hours as I have, fishing with masters of the art of trolling, you learn their tricks or you'll never catch a fish. Hours of "mano a mano" with my mentors taught me well, as I needed to figure out why when they where at the helm almost always, when they had a strike. You could bet your boat, if they had the steering wheel, their bait was always in a more favorable position than mine. I am not going to enter into the many strategies, that they used to beat me, but I will give you an example. We are trolling in almost a straight line and a fish rises behind the baits, all he would do is steer the boat so my bait would sink and his would gain speed and skip creating commotion and alerting the fish to it’s presence. Nine out of ten times, the fish would hit the fast escaping bait as opposed to the one he never noticed. You get the picture…

Back to my fishing trip, the set up was perfect and the water was just right. I knew a big fish was going to show up at any moment. I was right!! The fish jumped from ten feet behind the mullet and hit it hard. She was huge, no less than 400 pounds. I left the boat in forward and got the rod to set the hook. That is when the flat line started screaming like crazy. It had very little drag set, so with my 80 pound outfit in my hands, I slammed the drag on the 50 to the preset strike setting and moved to the port side of the boat with my big fish. I set the 80 on a rod holder, while I went to see what was happening with the 50. I pulled the 50 out of the rod holder and I felt the fish. He was running in an opposite direction than the other fish, so I knew, it was a second fish and not a tangle. I also noticed it was not pulling as hard. I thought, that this was the male and it would be smaller. I recovered some line on the 50 and put it back into the rod holder. I set the drag very lightly and went back to the 80. The 80 had had one third of the spool left. I sat in the chair after taking the boat out of gear and tried to recover some line. I did get some line back and was feeling confident. For a moment, I thought I could catch them both. I even tried to figure out how I was going to gaff them. Since I only had two gaffs, I thought of tail roping the small one after I had gaffed the bigger one. I had it all figured out! The fish, however, had other plans…

Once I had recovered some line on the 80, I went back to my 50. The Male was just swimming until I put on some pressure and he then he started pulling again. I thought he was a done deal, so I went back to my 80, just to find slack line and no fish. I recovered my hook and a leader that looked like a spring. Bill wrapped!!! I thought… later I learned how the leader ends up like that and it has nothing to do with a bill wrap. So I went back to my small male fish and I gaffed him with no problem. I was disappointed and excited at the same time. Having the chance to fight two of them at the same time was quite a privilege, so I was thankful for the opportunity.

I drifted for a while, had a sandwich and a coke and thought about the whole event and how I would have been great to get to the dock with two fish by myself. That is when I realized it was only 11:00AM and I had a good chance to catch another one. This time, I put just one bait in the water and two teasers. It used another mullet, this time on the 50 pound outfit. I don’t think I trolled for more than an hour when he showed up and jumped sideways all over the mullet. I gave him a few seconds to change directions and turn his face away from me and I set the hook. The battle was on, he was a little bigger than the other one but he was not huge. I knew, I could handle him and was praying he would behave so I could catch him. He jumped a little, ran a little and sounded a little, then he came back to the surface an showed me his beautiful color. I put two gaffs in him in less than 40 minutes.

It was after 1 PM when I managed to get him into the boat with the help of the gaff lines, the boat cleats etc. One day I will explain how you do it. I steered the boat back to Dorado with my precious cargo. It was too early and to have people at the dock to see the fish, but I was to tired to keep on fishing. I got back to the dock and there was no public. So, I took the fish back to the house hung them from the tower. This is where Don Jimmy took the picture you see here.

I sold the two fish to a local restaurant so I had no fish to clean. It was a great day, a terrific experience and a wonderful picture to remind me about this catch.

Catching two blue marlins the same day is great, it is even better when you do it by yourself!!!!

Credits: Capt. "Tato" Reyes

Marlin fishing

Marlin fishing is considered by many game fishermen to be the pinnacle of offshore game fishing, due to the size and power of marlin, relative rareness and difficulty of capture. It is also expensive, requiring considerable money to pursue as a regular hobby.
Blue marlin are inhabitants of tropical oceanic waters worldwide, occurring both in the Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific. Spawning is carried out in tropical waters and many individuals probably remain in tropical waters year round. However, significant seasonal migrations are made into the temperate waters of the northern and southern hemispheres to take advantage of feeding opportunities as northern and southern waters warm in spring and summer. Although blue marlin have the ability to thermoregulate, the lower limit of their temperature tolerance is thought to be in the region of approximately 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) although individual fish have been caught in cooler temperatures. Warm currents such as the Gulf Stream in the western Atlantic and the Agulhas Current in the western Indian Ocean serve as oceanic highways for blue marlin migration and have a major influence on their seasonal distribution. Larger individuals have the greatest temperature tolerance, and blue marlin encountered at the limits of their range tend to be large fish.

In the western Atlantic blue marlin can be seasonally found as far north as George's Bank and the continental shelf canyons off Cape Cod, influenced by the warm current of the Gulf Stream, and as far south as southern Brazil; in the eastern Atlantic their seasonal range extends northward to the Algarve coast of Portugal and southward to the southern coast of Angola. Some blue marlin are found at the southernmost tip of the continent, though whether they are Atlantic stock or Pacific stock is debatable, especially since an individual fish tagged in the western Atlantic was re-caught in the Indian Ocean off the island of Mauritius. Vagrant individuals have been taken by rod and reel as far north as Biscay (2005) and there have been claims of commercial captures as far north as south-west Ireland.

In the Pacific, blue marlin are seasonally found as far north as southern Japan and as far south as the Bay of Plenty in the North Island of New Zealand. Blue marlin in the eastern Pacific migrate as far north as Southern California and as far south as northern Peru. The southern limit of their distribution in the eastern Indian Ocean appears to be the waters of Albany and Perth in Western Australia, and in the western Indian Ocean blue marlin have been taken as far south as Cape Town.

Blue marlin have been found in the open ocean in thousands of fathoms of water, thousands of miles from land; however, they concentrate in their greatest numbers in areas where bottom structure (islands, seamounts, banks, and the edge of the continental shelf) create upwelling that brings deep nutrient-rich water close to the surface, sparking off plankton blooms that result in a food chain that ends in large marine predators such as dolphins, whales, large tuna and billfish. In temperate waters, the interaction of warm currents with these bottom structures is critical in setting up suitable environmental conditions for blue marlin and other warmwater gamefish. Temperature breaks created where bodies of warm and cool water are pushed up against each other also act as a less tangible form of structure which attracts bait and gamefish, including blue marlin.

Spawning locations are believed to include the islands of the Caribbean in the western Atlantic, the Gulf of Guinea in the eastern Atlantic, Hawaii, and Mauritius.