The stock market is not the only entity to enjoy a Santa Claus Rally. Santa also brought Kona a BIG marlin fishing rally, with the biggest landed on Christmas Eve. He threw in a whole slew of little ones as well. Ahi and mahi too. Sailfish even.
In the most recent run, Capt. Stretch on Xtreme Dream saw 25 marlin in eight trips and had two back to back days where he caught three marlin each day! Those are the type of stats you’d expect in summer, but here we are at New Years.
This marlin action actually got started in November, not a month usually associated with lots of marlin. The charter boat Benchmark tagged a blue they called 750 on Nov. 18. On the 20th Ko-na Dream let one go over 500. A couple days later on Nov. 23 a 534 was weighed in by Bite Me II. On Nov. 29, a 620-pound blue was weighed by wahine angler Karma Campbell from Sega-dor, caught on stand up gear no less. Kona Dream was back at it on Dec. 1 with a fish Capt. Keoks Borge called 700-plus, and then the big ones took a long nap.
The smaller blues provided fun fishing in the first two weeks of December, but it wasn’t until Dec. 16 that the big ones returned in earnest. Benchmark tagged one that day they estimated to be 800 pounds.
On Christmas Eve, Sea Strike weighed one that dropped the scales to 900 pounds – and that was with a couple of big chunks of meat taken out by sharks. Capt. Dale Leveron lamented, “Usually it’s white tips around but this was no white tip. I tried to chase it off by hitting it with a gaff but it just hid under the boat until we got the marlin close, then it took a couple bites. The shark wasn’t big but it probably stole 30 or 40 pounds of meat.”
On Dec. 28, Capt. Chuck Wilson tagged one that he called 700 pounds. With all these big fish being caught and released, estimating their size can get controversial. Rather than just eyeball his fish, Chuck got a tape measure out. Marlin don’t always Sit and Stay or allow you to pet them while alive and kicking, so Chuck honestly reported, “Just released a 700 pound blue marlin 125 short measure approximately.”
These days about 90% of all the blues caught in Kona are tagged and released, so an estimate based on a measurement is good, even if inexact. If one does not get a measurement or have a lot of experience in weighing fish, it’s real easy to call fish you let go bigger than they are. Big marlin can be very dangerous at the boat, most don’t know Sit and Stay, but a Skipper has a reputation to uphold, somehow.
Fishermen are oft perceived to have a relationship with the truth similar to the relationship Mark Twain had with exaggeration. However, the Pro’s will always call a fish smaller than they really think it is. A fate worse than death would be to write on a tag card an estimated weight of 900 pounds only to have that fish get caught again, taken to the scale and only weigh in at 450 pounds. This is one reason why most pro’s say, “If you don’t weigh, don’t say.” Scales don’t lie and they can’t exaggerate.
Kona Dream owner Dave Andersen fought a 500 pounder that they tried to catch and release quickly because there were a number of sharks about, but when they had it to leader twice the sharks moved in. Understandably, the marlin zipped away. When she finally came in calmly, it was apparent that the fish would need time to rest after being released, and the sharks were not going to give her that. So, they boated the fish rather than waste it to sharks
Dave said, “Hated to take her but she was done and the sharks were everywhere.” So the de-cision to tag and release or take a fish to the scales is not always just a matter of a good esti-mate.
Two days later, Craig Lindner fought a fish for an hour from Bwana that was strong and feisty every step of the way. The crew could see it was fat while chasing it around, but when they fi-nally got it boat side, the marlin did not know the Sit and Stay command, and measuring its length was not in the cards. The fish appeared large enough in the girth, and it carried that girth toward the tail, so Capt. Teddy Hoogs wondered if it might possibly be a grander.
Teddy said, “It was a good battle til the end. About an hour. You never know. The thing looked so fat we weren’t risking letting something go we’d later regret.”
Craig’s fish was his largest to date, and it did have sufficient girth for some granders, but it was just not long enough to get there. Capt. Teddy has caught more fish over 1,000 pounds than most guys will see in a lifetime. Had they let this fish go and he was asked for an estimate, he’s the type of guy who would probably just say “Who knows? Up there I guess.”
Although this article was scheduled to be about the big marlin in Tahiti, Kona’s fishing rally dis-placed it. The topic of verified weights VS estimated weights, however, is a good segue. Tahiti has few scales with the capacity to weigh big ones whole. The chunks are weighed when bagged for sale or trade. This makes perfect sense to them.
Tahiti, however, is also the land of four-hour lunches. Exaggerating like Mark Twain is just part of the fun.
I have a clock on my kitchen wall with no hands. Many Tahitians have big fish with no scales. This type of stuff drives some folks crazy. To the owners, it makes perfect sense.
This pretty much explains a lot of things.