Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
Marlin fishing has been kind of hit or miss lately, and I have been more than a little frustrated by those pointy nosed suckers. As a matter of fact I even tried to quit my co-captain position on the “Last Call” the other day. Funny thing is that rat who runs my cockpit (Mr. Evans) didn’t try to talk me out of it!
For some reason or another I retracted my resignation and found myself trolling along the West Wall of the Washington Canyon a day or so later. I was perched on my helm chair pouting to myself and generally being a spoiled 40-some-year-old brat when my pal, Capt. Jeremy on the charter boat “Wrecker” gave me the coordinates for a lobster ball that was holding some mahi-mahi. If there is anything that will lift my spirits it’s a good old fashion mahi massacre, so I immediately aimed the pointy end of the “Last Call” towards Jeremy’s numbers. A half hour or so later when we trolled up to the ball, a few mahi came out to greet us. The one thing Mr. Evans and I always agree on is that it is imperative to teach those little green and yellow devils a lesson for swimming too close to the “Last Call”, and he immediately went into kill mode while I kept the stern of the boat near the lobster ball. Unfortunately for us it was only a small bounty of mahi on the ball and our kill count stopped at a measly four fish. Our charter was happy to welcome those four fish to the boat though, and I am pretty sure I heard them preparing their dinner menu before the tails stopped flapping in the fish box.
On our way to the lobster ball I noticed a current break and a debris edge. It was about a mile back in the direction we had come from, so I aimed back towards it hoping that some fish would be hunting along the break. Mr. Evans put the trolling baits back out and was untangling our left side dredge teaser when something grabbed the left flat line. Neither one of us were looking in that direction so we had no idea what type of fishy had snuck up on us. And since the hook did not find its way into the fishy’s mouth, we were both left wondering for another minute or so until a marlin rushed after the left squid chain teaser. I yanked the teaser away from the marlin and Mr. Evans fed it the right flat line (after trying to unsuccessfully feed it the already half-eaten left flat line). This time the hook found it’s mark, and a split second later a very angry blue marlin took to the air and charged towards the boat.
I am not quite sure how fast the marlin was going. I know that I had to jam the throttle levers full ahead to keep the fish from landing on top of us. As the boat lurched up onto plane the fish kept coming forward, spending more time in the air than in the water. Everyone in the cockpit was yelling for the angler to wind and I kept hoping the fish would settle down. After a few minutes of wild fish jumps and some hairy boat handling (I guess whenever I am driving it is hairy boat handling. I am quite hairy after all, so I may need to think of a better term for it in the future) the fish settled down and the real battle began. Sometime during the next 40 minutes or so I learned that my angler was 67 years young and that this was his first chance ever at a marlin. Talk about being thrown in the deep end!
My angler did a great job. The fish tried it’s crazy antics two more times over the 2 hour and 35 minute fight. There were some tense moments, but when the spray settled we had a very clean release on a 200 pound class blue marlin. Those of you who are “Facebook Friends” with me can check out a short video of some of the jumps on my page.
That was our last bite of the day, but the guys in the charter were very pleased with the day, especially the gentleman that caught the marlin. He told me he had been waiting his whole life to catch a fish like that. Those are the kind of moments that make me glad I decided to rescind my resignation from a few days prior. So I figured I would give it another shot the following day.
My charter the next day consisted of 3 generations of the Griskowitz family. A grandfather, 2 fathers and 3 sons. One of the fathers told me that they had chartered Capt. Mark Sampson the previous two years and had caught a mess of sharks, but now they wanted to try and catch a marlin, or 6. I warned them that fishing had been a little hit or miss, but that did not dampen their spirits any and a few hours later we were trolling near the Washington Canyon again. This time we started at the spot known as the 800/800. There was no luck there so I went east of the canyon to several hundred fathoms. Still no luck. I trolled back into the canyon and crossed over to the west wall of the canyon. No dice. I said the heck with it and aimed back towards the 800/800. After passing by several lobster balls with no luck, I had all but decided that I was giving up on the balls for the day when I spotted two more that I had not yet been near. As I came past the first one my left long rigger bait popped out of the outrigger clip. Mr. Evans picked up the rod right as we both saw a bill stick out of the water behind the bait. I will give Mr. Evans plenty of grief when we are fishing and in my Coastal Fisherman columns, but he is pretty dialed into this fishing thing. And sure enough, he came tight on the marlin. The fish came up jumping and the youngest of the Griskowitz family, Kyle, was in the fighting chair. He had wanted his uncle to take the first turn since he had missed the trip with Capt. Mark the year before, but his uncle insisted that he go first (I thought that was really cool, on both of their parts). As we were watching the fish jump and maneuvering to keep it astern of the boat everyone was thinking white marlin.
The closer we got to the fish, however, I started to think differently. I didn’t want to give any false sense of excitement (not that a white marlin is not exciting in it’s own right), but I was pretty sure that it was a small blue marlin. When he grabbed the leader to make the release official, Mr. Evans confirmed my suspicion. He hollered, “Am I seeing what I think I am seeing?” I told him he was. It was in fact a 100 pound class blue marlin.
We took our time with the fish and got it up close to the boat for some better pictures. Mr. Evans grabbed it by the bill and young Kyle got out of the chair to get a close look at his fish. I never got his exact age, but I am thinking Kyle was in his early teens at the most. He came up to the bridge a little while later and told me how tired his arms were and then he thanked me for finding him his first marlin.
Yup, marlin fishing has been a little hit or miss lately, and I have been more than a little frustrated by those pointy nosed suckers. But these two blue marlin, caught by an older gentleman and a younger gentleman, reminded me why it is that we do this fishing thing. To catch a fish of a lifetime for one angler and to catch the fish that will start an angler on his way to a lifetime of catches, yup that’s why we do this. Like I said in one of my earlier columns this year, that’s why we call it fishing!
Capt. Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call” and President of the Ocean City Marlin Club.
