There have been some complaints about this regulation. It was designed to help white marlin so why should blue marlin anglers be subjected to it? The main complaint is that it also applies to combination baits. A favorite blue marlin bait is a horse ballyhoo rigged on a large hook with a lure like the Ilander in front of it. This bait is not a bait you are likely to deep-hook a white marlin with. If a circle hook is required, this combo-bait becomes ineffective at hooking blue marlin. Anglers argue that even blue marlin are not likely to be deep-hooked when using these types of rigs.
We were back in Venezuela, armed with 60 satellite pop-off tags, to find out. The idea is to catch blue marlin on these combo rigs and tag them. A control group will be caught on circle hooks and tagged. Helping with this study are the International Game Fish Association and the Marine Conservation Science Institute. Five of us headed out on the Waterman with Capt. Jimmy Grant. John brought along his graduate student Dan who he calls Jethro for some reason. Michael Domeier, President of the MCSI, and Jason Schratwieser, Conservation Director of the IGFA also joined us.
Michael is an old hat with pop-up satellite studies working with striped marlin, black marlin, and sharks. He and John are the experts. Dan had never been offshore before. Jason is a very accomplished angler but he had never caught a marlin nor had he worked with these pop-up tags before. The plan was to get Dan and Jason some tagging experience and then to spread out to other boats for the rest of the trip. Things don’t always work out the way they are planned.
The first day worked out pretty well. Dan’s first ever offshore fish turned out to be a white marlin. He dropped-back and “hooked-up” with a naked ballyhoo rigged with a circle hook. The fish really got down and mean and gave Dan a very hard time. It turned out that the fish was not hooked at all. Somehow, Dan had managed to lasso the fish. John had brought along a couple of re-built tags to use on whites or sails so we could get some practice. Jason tagged this first marlin. This whole trip turned out to be firsts and largest for all of us. Before we could find anymore billfish, large yellowfin tuna showed up. John caught a 150 pound fish which was his largest tuna ever but it would not hold that position for long. Jason was up next. His first marlin ever was what we were after. The blue marlin attacked a blue and white Ilander/ballyhoo combo. Dan placed his first tag. Only 59 more blue marlin to go. We had about 8 sailfish come into our spread but none wanted to eat and fill out our grand slam.
We were off to a good start but we had some problems. One was that the billfish bite was very slow for Venezuela. The other thing that held things up was the boats that we were expecting to go out in either had not arrived yet or they were having problems and could not get out. Instead of spreading out in the fleet, we all stayed on Jimmy’s boat for the whole trip. Jason caught our only blue marlin. We saw a couple others which would not bite. Michael caught his first ever white marlin to go with all of his blacks, blues, and striped marlin he has caught. That was our last billfish of the trip. We caught some nice dolphin but lost the big bull at the boat which was a repeat of our last trip down there. John and Dan were both fighting dolphin (Dan’s first ever) which I were trying to photograph when the bull shows up on a long rigger bait. I dropped the bait back a little and hooked him. I was fighting him with my camera hanging around my neck. John’s fish was gaffed and in the boat and I told him to take my camera or the rod. He took the rod ( I’m going to start calling him Fish Pig). The hook pulled when the mate had the leader. I told John that we would have caught that fish if he had taken the camera.
Billfish were being caught but it was very slow. What was red hot was the tuna bite. In the spirt of making lemonade when you are given lemons, we made the most of it. All of us caught our biggest yellowfins ever and then caught larger ones. These fish were in the 200 pound class. It was crazy. Birds falling out of the sky, tuna leaping into the sky, and porpoise everywhere. Jason is a really neat guy. It turns out we both did our undergraduate work at the same university. He is a Virginia boy who has made it big. He is the Conservation Director of the IGFA. I started calling the carnage director. His blue marlin and these yellowfin were the largest fish he had ever caught. When he was not fighting fish, he took over mate duties. First he wanted to leader these big tuna. OK, just stay in the boat. Next, he’s gaffing everything. Best of all, they like to use a harpoon instead of a flying gaff on these large tuna and sure enough, there was Mr. IGFA back there like Capt. Ahab looking like he has been harpooning all his life. The guy was super fun to fish with. He would fit right in with the crew on the Healthy Grin, I’m looking forward to fishing with him again. Needless to say, we ate a lot of tuna this week. For the scientists, not much success as to tags getting out but the fishing was really good.
59 more blue marlin to catch, I guess we will have to go back, dang-it. We will get some tags out off of the Carolinas. We will get some out on the Healthy Grin. Some time will be spent in the Dominican Republic and with the help of the IGFA and others, we may be holding a special tagging tournament somewhere like Puerto Rico. Basically, it means a lot of marlin fishing. I can handle that. It is for science.
