Blue Marlin Dream came true

[Mike Fisher]

Italian customer Fabio Steccanella had only one dream in mind when he contacted Mike at first early 2006, " i want to catch a Blue Marlin ".
we figured out together when the best time during the 2006 Blue Marlin Season on the Dominican east coast would be, fishing out of Punta Cana, so at the end i decided by weather/moon/tide predictions to recommend the days before the full moon in august, so Fabio chartered my 42ft Bertram Shekinah with charter captains Jose Manuel Mota and Luis Alberto Caridad and their mate Chino for 5 consecutive full days starting Saturday August 5th til Wednesday august 9th.
the first day, saturday, Sea was very calm, no waves, slow breeze, more the conditions for a boat ride, so he brought his wife Ariana with him. til 1PM they got only 1 Blue Marlin up in the spray but failed to attract him enough to take the lure, no hook set, no fight and then the weather changed quickly, by 3PM they run in under heavy rain and thunderstorms, weather conditions can change fast like that during hurricane season.
day number 2, sunday morning, Sea on 5-6 ft, winds around 15 knots with higher gusts, the wife stayed at the resort. that day the boat did 9 hrs and again it was not a successful day, only 3 Blue Marlins up and no hook set nice, no fight, sunday night the crew changed all lures/hooks, if an equipment is without luck on one day it will never work.
today is day number 3, the boat is still out, but Jose Manuel Mota sent me the report for the first half of todays trip by mail.
at 11:40AM Jose set the hook on a Blue Marlin female, 9/0 Penn reel, 50lbs line on, the hooks set right and Fabio has the first Blue Marlin fight of his life. the fight lasted 11:40AM til 2:06 PM, 2hrs 26 min, during that time the crew of 3 had no chance to give their customer a hand, he wanted to get his fish on his own, no help wanted, and he won. Manuel told me by phone a minute ago that Fabio is barely able to walk right now, but he has still a very wide smile on his face.
lines are wet again, they have 2 more hrs left today and of course wednesday and thursday are two more days to beat the size of todays female, the crew counts it on an 300+lbs, so there's plenty of space to top this weight upwards.

i will download the pics from the cams tonight and post them by tomorrow afternoon.

tight lines
Mike
Mike@MikesMarina.info

[Norfolkboy]

What a fish, can understand why the guy was so happy.

[BaggieRich]

Wow. I really can't imagine fighting a fish that size for nearly 2 1/2 hours!



Man, someday I've gotta give this a go!

Thanks for the report Mike!

Cheers,

Rich

[Mike Fisher]

hi Rich,
it's even unbelievable for me, because he did it the whole time fighting stand up with the fighting belt, we have great comortable fighting chaairs mounted, but he wanted it like that.

[tommy a]

Brilliant - sounds great - was the fish tagged and released then ?

[pingu]

wow sounds great

but a bit knackering for a fatbloke like me ;-@

[Mike Fisher]

released yes, but not tagged. i am against the tagging, because too many people i don't wish to see in our local waters are able to study the Billfishes movements by tagging data bases, we don't have longliners or any other kind of commercial fishing in our area, we would fight them with guns in our hands, just 3 dozen sportfishing yachts and sorrily during the summertime those so called "Sportfishing" millionars come over with their million dollars expensive yachts to smoke their expensive cigars and run Killfish tournaments.
those same people want to blame other countries for not to practice catch & release, i myself do it, still as the only one on the east coast, but i also should defend some of my competitors against those rude verbal attacks, because with a few sportfishing yachts running offshore our Fishing System is sane, even if every sportfisher in the area would go on to eat all caught fishes there would not be a remarkable affect on the quantity of breeding Marlins, american longliners kill in one night more Billfish than a small Island's sportfishery is fighting during the whole season.
But anyways, i started the catch & release and stay that way, sure knowing there will be more sportboats fishing the area the next seasons, so the protection should be started before the fishing has an negative effect on the Billfish population.
But sometimes it makes me sad to read threads on the forums where people verbally shot against third world countries because their hungry people eat Marlin, Sailfish, Shark aso, over 90% of the worlds Billfishes get killed by commercial fishery/longliners, we have none of them.

tight lines
Mike

[Fisherdan]

i dont see any difference between billfish, sailfish, and a marlin they all look the same... great catch;)

[Mike Fisher]

yeah Dan,
they're all Billies, they're beautiful fishes, and they're all worth to be protected to meet them again for a even bigger fight next season.
good luck
Mike

[Omahayank]

wow!