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Category: Fishing Stories
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Published on Saturday, 20 August 2011 08:47
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Written by Shimanobwoie
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Hits: 189
After a few busy days out on the water back to back it was time to have a few quite drinks at the bosses house and talk about the last few trips and listen to his old game fishing stories. My goal was to get my first marlin for my 21st birthday which was at the start of the year. I mentioned to him that I wanted to get it in the next couple of months and he went on to say we'll get you a big one on 37kg stand-up. I wasn't too worried about the size of my first marlin I just wanted to catch one even if it was small.
The next morning it was a very cold morning and I wasn't too keen to get out of bed even to go fishing/work but I knew as soon as my feet were onboard I knew I’d have enough energy and be warm enough. It was around 10:30 and we weren't having the best of sessions so it was time for me to have a couple of drops and help put some fish in the box for the customers. My first plan was to put 5/0 gangs down on 30lb mono with a whole squid and float it down but I soon changed my mine and quickly rigged my saltist up (The previous trip I got my first longtail tuna on this rod). Only fishing in 65-70 mtrs it wouldn't take too long before my bait hit the bottom but little did I know it wouldn't even come close to the bottom. As I was feathering the bait down I felt a bump at about 30 meters so I quickly engaged my reel to see what the bump was about. I didn't feel any weight at all but noticed my line angle was changing quickly and was soon rubbing on the bottom of the boat.
The boat can fish 8 people comfortably and is a full walk around boat. 6 out of the 8 blokes onboard had their line in the water still so I had to move around the bow to start fighting the fish. Almost around the boat to the other side and someone was calling it for a big cobia. In my gut I had a feeling that it wasn't a cobia but also didn't think it was going to be a small stripe marlin. The fish come out of the water and I screamed out ITS A MARLIN ITS A MARLIN so the mad rush to get the 2 lines rubbing on my braid out of the water and to quickly chase down this fish. Now normally I hand my rod over to the person whose standing next to me but in this case we had a boat full of older people and it was a marlin so I was a bit selfish. An hour had gone and the leader had been up to the rod tip (a numerous amount of times now) and my arms were almost about to fall off but we finally got a chance to grab the bill tag it and get the hooks out. This is where a problem arose the first hook was inside of his mouth on his gills the next was fine and free swinging and the next was rock solid in his eye so we made the call to keep it.
The outfit I used to land the marlin was 40ha saltist level wind reel on a 6'6" 50lb rovex carbon-tec rod with 50lb fins braid and 80lb jinkai plus as the leader.
