A week after the Northern Lights II weighed a 1,075-pound blue marlin, its sister ship, Northern Lights I, weighed a 1,309-pound blue marlin on Wednesday to give Kona its fifth grander of the year, the Big Island its sixth, and the state its seventh. Only four other blue marlin have been caught in the rest of the world this year.
A week after the Northern Lights II weighed a 1,075-pound blue marlin, its sister ship, Northern Lights I, weighed a 1,309-pound blue marlin on Wednesday to give Kona its fifth grander of the year, the Big Island its sixth, and the state its seventh. Only four other blue marlin have been caught in the rest of the world this year.
With captain Mat Bowman at the helm and crew Kyle Vannatta on deck, angler Michael Bilich reeled the big fish to the boat. It’s Kona’s second fish weighing more than 1,300 pounds in 2015. The big surprise for marlin watchers, the fish broke the “tail stump” rule. The girth of its tail stump — the link between the body and the tail — was 19.5 inches, which predicted a weight of only 950 pounds.
Jim Rizzuto’s Kona Fishing Chronicles column appears in West Hawaii Today every Monday.