MBFG March Marlin Madness
When the weather allows for a sneaky midweek trip to chase marlin out wide, you just gotta go.
What Happened
The call came in on Tuesday evening, “weather is looking good for tomorrow, fancy a fish?”
Work can wait so gear was assembled and early next morning the four of us headed out of the marina with sharp hooks and high expectations.
The weather wasn’t great but the mighty Luna made for a comfortable ride. Lures in at the 200m depth contour and within 30mins the first hungry marlin appeared in the spread.
I’d been marlin fishing a few times but on this occasion we were trolling lures with no hooks - yep that’s correct NO HOOKS. The theory is the marlin swim into the spread looking for a feed and the angler teases with the hookless lures then feeds back a bait or lure with a hook. This is a far more exciting method of catching marlin, and the theory is you get better hook-up with this switchbait method.
Surprisingly the marlin is not afraid of the boat and spends a good few minutes attacking the lures just behind the boat as you attempt to switch the hooked bait in front of his bill - the adrenaline goes through the roof and finally you see him engulf the hook and the fight is on.
The 1st fish was a nice blue marlin around 90kg which was leader and released after a 20 minute fight. The 2nd and 3rd blues unfortunately drop the hooks after 10mins - so much for the better hookup rate from switch baiting! The 4th fish was a striped marlin which are notoriously more cautious, so despite a good few minutes checking out the spread, he was not tempted by a hooked bait. After a nice by-catch dolphinfish and a few curious dolphins playing with the lures we were onto our 5th - another great fish, a blue marlin around 100kg, again leader and released to swim another day.
After what has been a quiet game fish season we were very pleased with our 5-4-2 success rate and headed home with big smiles and some great video footage for the archives.
Photos
