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"For some guys, a Harley Davidson would do it. For others it takes a Fender Strat. Me? I entered a Big Game fishing tournament in Tobago. Yep, turning 40 is a weird experience for a guy. It’s not enough that we have to watch all our bits drooping and sagging, we’ve got to complete the transition by doing something so out of character that it makes all sane people tut-tut with amazement. I’ve been fishing since I was 7 years old so I’m no novice, but I know absolutely nothing about boats and seamanship. I have done big game fishing before whilst on holiday and have caught barracuda, yellowfin tuna, bonitos and kingfish. But I’ve never caught the numero uno: a billfish. But I’ve dreamt of it, and that’s the driving force. Too many Hemmingway stories and films when I was younger maybe, but I’ve always wanted to catch a blue marlin. They are huge fish, growing up to 2000lb in weight and have massive reserves of strength and power. They are the perfect pelagic (open ocean) predators with a huge, hard, rough bill on their nose for stunning prey before they swallow it and a massive tail shaped like a scythe which powers them at phenomenal speeds. To catch them, you pull up to 8 lures in a pattern or spread for hours and hours across the ocean. Local knowledge will set you near the baitfish that they feed on, or watching birds following or diving on the water can give a marlin away. But it’s mostly trolling lures or baits behind purpose built sport-fishing boats for hours along undersea drop-offs or reefs, with a good skipper at the right time, in the right place and at the right speed that yields a result. In 1998, I chartered a boat for a week in Gran Canaria, and I almost realised my ambition. For about a minute I was connected to what was estimated at 700 lbs of very angry fish. But, the fates conspired against me. The owner was Dutch and drunk most of the time. The skipper of the boat was Spanish (but sober) and had never fished before. And the big blue was smarter than all of us. It took the smallest lure on the only rod that didn’t have enough line on the spool to hold it. When it struck, it was a scene reminiscent of Fawlty Towers. The owner yelling in Dutch, the skipper panicking in Spanish, me bewildered in Scottish. We tried to get the other six lines in: pandemonium. They got me in the fighting chair and strapped the rod onto me. I could see smoke pouring from the reel as the line disappeared. More pandemonium in Dutch and Spanish as they realised the reel was running out of line and they backed the boat up over the rest of the lines fouling the propeller in the process. After taking around 600 meters (that’s over a third of a mile in old money matey) of line in one unstoppable run, the fish won it’s freedom and celebrated in the distance with an imperious tail-walk. If you ever go to Gran Canaria, don’t fish on the Blue Marlin sport fishing boat out of Puerto Rico! But I keep thinking of that power: 600mtrs in about a minute dragging the equivalent of 130lbs (the maximum drag on the reel which we had to go to in our attempt to stop the fish and which resulted in the leader breaking). Awesome. Of course, many of you reading this would have some sympathy with the fish and I have to confess that I was certainly glad that it lived to hunt another day. You see, I don’t want to kill my blue marlin and have it stuffed and mounted in my office like some grotesque Victorian potency totem. I intend to tag it and release it with, hopefully, a couple of pictures and my memories of the event. So why do it at all? As I said, I’ve just turned forty years old. Why not?
The house is very comfortable and the people who work there, Arnim George the manager, Mona and Pamela the maids couldn’t be more friendly and helpful. Day 2 of the trip is given over to Dave so that he can prepare the lures and baits for the tournament. The sea is a beautiful azure blue but there are huge, slowly shifting black patches stretching for hundreds of feet in weird, polygonal shapes. These are massive shoals of bait (small fish) which in their turn bring the larger fish to feed, which in their turn bring the marlin and large pelagic predators such as tuna, wahoo, dorado (called dolphin here) and dolphins (called flipper here). And sharks of course.
We tried a makeshift repair using superglue and all sorts, which worked for a while but inevitably as soon as I started lengthening line it snapped again. I should know better than to buy cheap stock by now. I spent some time wading the flats chucking a spinner around and chatting to Arnim. He proved to be a very intelligent and thoughtful individual who knew a lot about his homeland, the plants and animals. As well as running the house, he kept down a job with the environmental agency controlling mosquitoes on the nightshift. He was great company. In the evening, we went down to the registration to pay the fees, get the “free” promotional goodies from Carib beer who are the sponsors and hang out with the other anglers. We also got the tags for the tag and release program and the cameras to record the catch and get our points. These little one-shot cameras are a real boon to wandering anglers. Day 3 and the tournament has started. We’re on the boat at 5 am to bait hooks and lines are down and fishing by 6. We thought we’d target wahoo and dorado for the first 4 hours and then switch to marlin rigs, but the radio burst into life at around 7 am with one lucky angler into a blue marlin. Instant tactic change as we headed “outside” and rigged up. Marlin normally hit or spear their prey with their bills to stun it before eating it so when a fish strikes, the lines burst from their clips on the outriggers (basically a long pole sticking out from each side of the boat) and the reel screams. If the fish doesn’t hook itself, the angler lets the drag go so that the bait floats as if it’s stunned and the marlin normally turn and take it again. The angler has to count slowly to 5 before tightening up and striking – the longest 5 seconds of his life usually! This is called “drop-back” and I was terrified I’d get it wrong. To complicate things, we were also pulling plastic lures and these require the boat to be accelerated on a strike to set the hook. This means that you have to watch the lures and rods all the time to be ready to react in precisely the right way. To attract the fish to the boat, and therefore the lures or bait, we also pulled teasers. These are devices that spin, splash, flash, dive, bubble and generally create interest in predators. When you get a strike, all the other lines and all the teasers must be brought into the boat so that you don’t foul or tangle them. It is sheer mayhem for the first 5 or 10 minutes until everyone settles down. At just before 8 am, one of the outrigger clips snapped and the rod on the port bow bucked over with the reel screaming. Everyone dived for the other rods and I got into the fighting chair, gripping the rod like a vice with my left hand. Most fighting chairs on sport boats are permanently fixed to the floor but the one on Kuda is free-standing; a bit like a dinner chair with a gimbal to hold the rod just below the cushion and between your legs. I viewed it with some suspicion when I saw it at first and now I was going to have to put it to the full test. The locals fight their fish standing up and I tried this on the first day against a big wahoo but couldn’t get my balance with the sea rolling around and so forth so I wanted to use the chair. My stomach turned over as I saw a beautiful blue, gold and green fish of about six feet in length shoot out of the water. It was a billfish, and it was indeed a blue marlin. The battle was on and my mouth went totally dry and stayed that way for the duration of the fight. I was now on my own because under tournament rules, only the angler must touch the rod for the fish to qualify. The sheer power and speed of these fish is impossible to describe. I think only other billfish anglers would really understand. It’s a bit like being connected to a rapidly accelerating car by a thin rope of between 30 and 80lb breaking strain and then, somehow having to stop that car, turn it round and bring it back towards you by brute strength. Some people say that the fish can travel at up to 70 mph and who am I to argue; it felt more like 90! Normally you would use a shoulder harness to alleviate the pressure on your arms but I was so nervous that I’d do something wrong when getting into it and lose the fish that I just gritted my teeth and fought on. My left arm felt like lead. When the fish pulled and ran, I just held on tight and let it work itself out against the drag on the reel. When it stopped, I pumped the rod up in a short smooth action and wound in line on the downward stroke. Thousands of times. Sometimes I only gained an inch, other times the fish turned and ran straight at me and I had to wind like mad or the captain helped out by accelerating the boat slightly. The boat is as big a part of the fight as the angler and it takes a really skillful captain to keep the pressure on the marlin and help the angler by backing up, changing direction, flicking to neutral or racing forward as required. Dave was reading the fish’s mind. I was just getting on with the job. Eventually, the fish was beaten
and with cries of “Wine, wine, wine, wine, wine” from the crew I
wound the reel really fast to bring the fish alongside the boat. Now
came the tricky bit, and it’s also not without some real risk to
limbs; anglers and crew have even been killed at this point so it’s
not rushed or taken lightly. First one of the crew, a guy called Kastar,
grabbed the leader (a length of heavy nylon of about 300lbs breaking
strain connecting the hook to the main fishing line which in this case
was a mere 50lb breaking strain). He wrapped the line round his hand
once so that he could draw the fish in and grip it by the bill. Then,
Dave, jabbed a tag into the fish to record it’s capture whilst the
deckhand, Paul, took a photo to prove to the judges that we caught it.
The fish was not too happy about this treatment and jumped hard at
Kastar. The bill is very rough and Kastar had forgotten his gloves so he
couldn’t hold the fish and he released it right there and then. Dave
immediately turned to Paul and asked him about fourteen times if he took
the pictures. Paul guaranteed that he had taken at least three. In all
the melee they had quite forgotten all about me and the only clear view
I got of it was watching it slowly sail off down swell and with a flick
of it’s huge tail it was gone into the depths. But I’d done it, my
first marlin. A beer tastes like nectar after you catch a billfish. No other taste like it in the world, I guarantee. I thought that it had taken me 20 minutes to subdue the fish, but the captain told me later that it was more like 45. I was so excited that I hardly remember the details at all and my left arm ached like never before, more because of the nervous tension than the workload. But I’d caught a marlin and I could grin like a cheshire cat, and did so for the rest of the day! At an estimated 60lbs, it was a mere minnow in the marlin stakes and Kastar later told me that the smaller ones are always wild when they are brought to the boat. The big guys give up easier at the end, but take longer to subdue obviously. Although we trolled until lines up at 4 pm, that was the only strike of the day. At the weigh-in, I handed in the one-shot camera and tag form and was just in time to see a marlin brought to the scale that weighed 644lbs. This fish made mines look like a tiddler and was a new record for these waters. This was the boat to beat then. Day 4. Dave Moore is ex-army as well as being an ex-Tobagan national football player. The ex-army bit was showing strongly today with Paul, the deckhand, getting the rough edge of Dave’s tongue. Paul is 20 and has an attitude, so he didn’t help his case much. The reason for Dave’s manner was that the instant “lines down” was called, we were into fish. The first was a blackfin tuna, which unfortunately didn't count in the tournament. The next was a small wahoo, which was too small to be entered. Next up was a bigger wahoo which turned on the line and with it’s razor-teeth, it severed the line cleanly. You must fish with a long wire trace for wahoo, but they can still turn on the nylon and cut it clean off. The next wahoo to hit was a real cracker. I’m getting more experienced so I knew right off that it was a big one. I fought it for ages and got it right to the boat but Paul, remember him, didn’t grab the leader and lunged for the fish with the gaff. The line, inevitably, broke because of the pressure. Dave was not a happy boy. So when he yelled “Leef de rod! Leef de rod!”, I jumped to it, lifted the rod and stuck into something reminiscent of a brick wall, but a brick wall that took off at a frantic speed in the opposite direction. It felt like another blue marlin. I’d just got in the chair when, sickeningly, everything went slack - the worst feeling in the world. Was it me? Did I mess up when I struck? He’d come off in any event. I stood up and put the rod in the holder and just then, the rod next to me bent double and we struck into another fish. It ran and ran and ran and line poured off the reel. I sat in the chair nervously waiting for it to settle down and for the crew to get the other lines in. I kept repeating to myself “Relax and stay calm, just hold the rod up and wait”. But it didn’t work; my arm ached already from the tension! Paul had jammed a reel and he had a tangle; I thought Dave would have a heart attack as he screamed at him to pull the line in by hand and clear the deck area so we could fight the fish. When we recovered the line we’d hooked the first fish on, we discovered that the fish that I was now fighting had run across the leader in it’s eagerness to get the bait and cut it off cleanly with it’s bill, freeing the first fish. Otherwise, we’d be into that Holy Grail of game fishers, a double billfish hook-up. Then it would truly have been chaos! This fish was a bit larger than my first, but still only small by blue marlin standards, and it fought and fought and fought. I would get it to the boat and it would tear off again, jumping and tailwalking and treating me to the magnificent sight of it rearing out of the water and thrashing it’s bill from side to side. I’d get it back to the boat and it would dive for the ocean floor, almost taking me with it, or so it felt. I had to use the harness halfway through the fight because I was getting numb in my left arm and sweating heavily from the effort. A moment of sheer panic occurred when the handle on the reel started turning without moving the reel drum. This time it was me who was shouting at the crew and we discovered that I had to pull it out from the reel as well as winding it as fast as I could to recover any line.
Two blue marlin! Does it get any better? Not for Paul it seemed. When we returned to the weigh-in, I was given the bad news that the photos from the previous day didn’t count for points because it was impossible to identify the fish from the one and only picture that came out. It seems that Paul had his hand over the lense whilst he took the photos. Dave was mad again. You see, up to that point we were lying somewhere near top place and with a big cash prize for the top boat, you can see why he was so keen! I can only pray that today’s pictures were better and that the photos he also took with my camera actually come out. Day 5 and the big news is that the second pictures were perfect so we’re in the points with 350 and are lying 7th in the tournament overall. We could have been 4th with the picture of the first fish, but them’s the breaks I suppose. Today is called a lay-over day and all the boats and crew get together on the beach at Pigeon Point to have a beach cook-out and party. There’s live music, games, competitions etc. But there is mostly consumption of vast quantities of beer and rum punches. This, we hope, will be in our favour because we left early to go get some fresh bait for tomorrow, leaving the party in full swing and getting wilder by the minute. True to form, Paul decided to stay and party so we have to wonder if he’ll make the dockside by the required 5 am tomorrow. On the way there and also on the way back we pulled some small lures and caught a couple of bonito tuna. Dave rigged one up immediately for barracuda. This is pretty normal, until you realise that he rigged it on a hand line! I’ve caught barracuda; they’re fast and vicious and there is no way that I’d like to have one connected directly to my hand. Now I understand why Dave has so many scars. I struggled at the party a bit because I just can’t get the swing of the accent. They, in turn, struggled with my accent so it was hard to fully participate in the fishing talk. But like fishermen the world over, the tales were always about the fish that got away and not about the ones that were landed or tagged. The fight that lasted 5 hours and then the fish spooled them (took all the line off the reel in one run) whilst the boat chased it; the huge marlin on 30lb test line that broke off at the boat because the angler panicked and rubbed the leader on the transom. All that good stuff and Dave and my crew were giving as good as we got. Our lost blue marlin gained 50lb every time the tale was told and how Dave knew it was a female was a mystery to me. He even started to speculate that it was the mother of the one we did catch and the little one had somehow deliberately freed her before grabbing the bait that caught it! Rum’s an amazing spirit. In truth, none of us actually saw the beast, but it’s all part of the tournament banter and was really good fun. I had mixed feelings about the last day. Dave was mad keen to get as high up in the tournament as possible and the only way to do that was to bring a marlin to the scales to have it weighed. Naturally, the marlin would be dead by then and that wasn’t in my plans at all. We compromised: if the marlin was definitely a record-breaker of at least 650lbs or more, he could take it. After all, with a cash prize of $50000 and a brand new car, it means a lot to a guy who earns a lot less than the minimum wage in the UK.
Birds are amazing things. Here we were, 15 miles offshore in the middle of featureless sea and out of nowhere a flock of sea-birds materialise and start to feed on baitfish driven to the surface by a school of albacore tuna below them. Albacore are not point earners so we didn’t waste any time, just long enough to make sure that there weren’t any yellowfin tuna or marlin shadowing them. We trolled and trolled and trolled. We changed baits. We blessed the water with beer. We prayed. We made Captain Dave jump when he fell asleep and we let the drag run on the reel to make it scream as if a fish had taken. Nothing, nowt, nada. There are two schools of thought in marlin fishing. One is that the best time is around the full moon and the other is that the worst time is around the full moon. Last night was a full moon so the Tobagan marlins follow the latter school of thought. They probably feed all night long in the moonlight so are less keen on the baits during daylight hours. Who knows though. Lines up at 3 pm today and there was the usual embarrassment surrounding the tips for Dave and Kastar. It’s a British problem; we just don’t know how to tip and we always vex over it. Is it too much, is it too little, how to pass it over graciously etc etc. Anyway, it was done and we were off to the awards dinner by 7pm to see how we’d done. At the dinner, we discovered that Paul had picked an argument with the wrong guy at the beach party and had been laid out cold with one punch. He spent the night in casualty. It was probably just as well because I think the rest of us would have put him there when we discovered that we’d have been 5th if the photo had counted. The guys would have got some cash and some beer and I’d have a little teak desk trophy that would have had pride of place in my office I can assure you. As it was we finished 10th (joint with a few others) out of 37. Not bad for an amateur. So that was that; been there, done that and am the proud owner of the t-shirt. If you want to give it a go, there a couple of things you should bear in mind. First, it is not a cheap sport. A good boat and crew will cost anything from $350 to $1200 (and possibly even more) per day depending on where you fish. Also, because we’re so far away in the UK it is really difficult to tell if you are getting the right kind of boat and crew for that money. I booked this trip on the Internet through a guy called Clive Marshall, the owner of the villa where I stayed and the owner of the boat, Kuda. Clive called me after I made the initial enquiry and we had a long discussion. Since I knew roughly what questions to ask, I was able to figure out that he knew a bit about marlin fishing and that I wouldn’t repeat the Gran Canaria fiasco. I had booked that also via the web but the owner, a guy called Hans Krut, had published a very old picture of his boat and when I got there I discovered it was a rust bucket with old gear and tatty tackle (a sure sign of trouble – people who know about fishing know better). Worse, the galley and cabin had cockroaches crawling all over it. Caveat emptor. You can, of course, just show up at the pier whilst on holiday and join a trip. One lucky guy from Newcastle paid £20 to go on a trip whilst I was in Gran Canaria and it was his rod that the fish struck – a 250lb blue marlin. He’d never fished before in his life and just fancied a half day on the water as a respite from the beach! And there was I, fishing every daylight hour and spending a small fortune for nothing. That’s fishing. Going at the right time can be tricky too. I picked tournament time because no-one would hold a tournament when there were no fish. But even then, I learned that this was the best marlin year they had ever had. Some years it is tuna that are caught and some it’s dorado or sailfish. This year, happily for me, was a marlin year. The next thing you should bear in mind is the conditions you are likely to face. The sun will fry you so take plenty of high factor cream and wear t-shirts. The crew, if they are good, will be courteous but busy most of the time so help them out by staying out of their way and not asking dumb questions. If you’re interested in what is going on, watch and then ask them to explain when things quiet down. Do exactly what the skipper tells you and talk with him before you start to make sure that he knows you need help and that you understand exactly what he wants you to do when you get a strike or a hook-up. This can be a dangerous business. If using heavy line test of 130lb or more, it’s not impossible for the angler to get pulled overboard in the event of a reel jam or a tangle. If you are fishing in a group, it lessens the chance of your rod being the one to hook the fish, but it alleviates the potential boredom of long hours trolling with foreign crews and limited conversation. Each to their own. Needless to say, don’t do this at all if you get sea-sick or are spooked by the ocean. Trolling at around 7 knots on seas of up to 9ft anything up to 20 miles from land is not everyone’s idea of an idyllic day on the water and when the wind gets up and the sea spray dries like sharp sand on your skin it is not at all comfortable. Especially in open boats like Kuda (her only fault in my view). You’ll also need to stay in fishing friendly accommodation to have meals etc planned to suit your hours as well as taxis or whatever to get you to and from the boat dock, often at ungodly hours of the day. You can catch marlin in almost all tropical waters but watch the seasons as they vary location to location. Marlin are highly migratory so try to stick to the age-old fishing adage of go to the right place, go at the right time and do the right thing. Closer to us, there is a reasonable fishery in Gran Canaria (apart from the boat I chartered of course) and an international star attraction in Madeira where you can catch a “grander” (a 1000lb fish). This is the really big stuff and it takes stamina. I knew what I was in for so I put in a couple of months of fitness training prior to my trip. If you get a big fish, you can be fighting her (all the big granders are female – all the more reason to release them in my view) for up to 5 hours and maybe more. Do lots of rowing, upper arm, lower back, triceps and wrist exercises to get you up to scratch. But nothing, repeat nothing, will truly prepare you for what happens when you fight your first fish. The tension and pressure work against you all the time, tiring and exhausting you faster than you can exhaust the fish. The crew will be shouting at you to keep up the pressure and wind the reel whilst your arm is dropping off. Bizarrely, although most people are stronger with their right arm, you fight the fish with your left. Don’t ask me why. Finally, if you do want to do it, make it very soon indeed. The stocks of all pelagic billfishes are collapsing and are now only around 15% of what they were in the 1960’s. Sport anglers are not blameless in this decline, but nowadays the vast percentage of sport caught billfish are tagged and released. 22,176 blue marlin have been tagged and released since the program started – plus my two of course – and of the 31 marlin caught in the tournament, 29 were tagged and released. The commercial long-line and drift fisheries for tuna and swordfish do the real damage. These death machines set miles of monofilament netting or drag up to 52000 hooks spaced 40 inches apart. Each boat takes 42000lb of “product” daily from the oceans. Amongst this “product” are marlin, sailfish, spearfish, shark, dolphins and even small whales. The grotesque name for this is “bycatch” and in most countries it can’t be landed and is simply dumped over the side, dead. An international disgrace. Commercial fishermen have to make a living too, especially in poorer countries. But this is an unpublicised and unseen crime against the world community, on a larger scale than rainforest destruction. Something to think about when you buy your next swordfish steak or open your next can of tuna. The scientists reckon that 88% of swordfish brought to the table have never spawned. And, believe me, there is no such “product” as dolphin friendly tuna. If you are lucky enough to catch a billfish, be smart and tag and brag. Addendum: I met a guy from Edinburgh called Stoo Williamson whilst I was fishing in Mauritius earlier this year. I bragged so much about how great the tournament was that he entered it himself in April 2000. He was on board a boat called Hard Play II and he only went and won the whole shebang with 5 marlin!!!!
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