Lanzarote - Marlin season begins

[Lanzarote Fisher]

I thought it'd be a good idea to post here last friday's report from David, the skipper of our charter boat here in Lanzarote, as he was lucky enough to catch the first blue marlin of the season in these waters.
The two pictures are the marlin just before being released, and Lorenzo, a very experienced italian client that was of great help throughout the day, fighting with the marlin.


"Finally, we've had a good week's of fishing. Our colleagues at the Katfish have been fishing plenty of white trevally, with weights up to six kilos, and a couple of beautiful 20 kilo wahoos (an another one they lost) on thursday, but the real action has been on the Margarita Segundo as we became the first boat in Lanzarote to catch a marlin in 2009. We knew it wouldn't be long, as we've been having news about marlin catches on the eastern islands since a month ago, and now we are fortunate to have the marlin here in the waters of Lanzarote.

Funnily enough, saturday began fishing for wahoo, motivated by the catches earlier in the week; but after a couple of unsuccessful hours, we changed to marlin lures and decided to head south east looking for a big one. Just before 2pm, about 10 miles away offshore, one of the reels screams out from a marlin strike, but unfortunatelly didn't take. Nevertheless, we were quite excited and we sticked around in the hope of getting a second chance. It didn't take long, ten minutes later we were hooked again, a marlin of about 220 kilos that puts up an excellent fight. In about forty minutes the marlin gives up, we put it on the side of the boat, bring it round, take off the hook and release it. Everyone is cheering up full of excitement; with a bit of luck, next week will be just as good."

[pompy.bass.man]

those fish are hugey

[Lanzarote Fisher]

On tuesday our boat Margarita finally caught the second marlin this summer. It's a slow start, but hopefully we'll get more marlin as summer progresses. Here I leave David's report:

It took some time, but one month later luck was again on our side and we caught our second marlin this season.

We left Puerto del Carmen on the Margarita heading Southeast, and not even half an hour had gone by, when the sonda showed a huge shoal of (probably) mackerel. We hanged around the area for a while, but as nothing was happening, we moved on back to our original route.

The hours passed by without much luck, but when we were heading back to port we decided to try that morning spot once again, as if we knew we would be given one last chance. And so it was, all of a sudden a 80lb reel screams out, it's a marlin of over 200 kilos. It was a very intense 30 minute fight, and even though we were a bit dissapointed not to see it jump even once, when we finally took the hook off and released it, everyone was exultant. Hopefully we won't have to wait as long for the third!