Blue Marlin Caught Off Fort Lauderdale

[jlaratro]

9-17-05 First Blue Marlin on Jake's new boat out of PE

Fish Story Time – Saturday September 17, 2005 out of Port Everglades
We started at 3:00am planning on catching bait and high speed trolling at daybreak for Wahoo. We end up catching a nice mix of pilchards, goggle eyes, and ballyhoo. 6:00am we are high speed trolling in pitch black with a Yozuri Bonita and a wahoo lure with a rigged ballyhoo. Instantly we land a nice king on the Yozuri in about 300ft.
After passing all the schools of Bonita, we decided to head offshore. Slicks and weed lines everywhere, now we are just trolling the fresh ballyhoo and a kite with a fake flying fish. We catch one cuda way offshore and miss a billfish that hit two lines.

Just before noon we decide to pull up and head inshore to live bait. We see a fish follow the last bait to ten feet behind the boat and realize it was a billfish. At first we thought it was a spearfish because it looked small. J Pop put the rod tip in the water to drop the bait (naked bally) and the fish takes it.

Once the fish jumps we realize it is a Marlin! For the first hour we thought it was a small white. After some great greyhounding, we then know that it is a small BLUE!

The fight goes on for 3 hours. The fish is hooked on a 50lb mono 5ft rig on a 12lb two-piece rod with 20lb test.

The fish is landed and released! This was angling at its greatest. Jake’s new 26’ Panga saved the day when it came to maneuvering. J Pop’s angling skills made up for the under matched tackle.

The blue marlin was fairly close to a 100lb fish. See the pics below:

[Shark Tagger]

Awesome!! You guys rock

[BoatsMiami.com Yachts]

There are a few whites out there also :lol: ... this one we 'guesstimated' in th 80lb range, a nice fish for a white. It hit a big blue/silver Alien intended for a big bull, but hitting the 50TLD it was in the boat in only 10 minutes or less. We were in the shipping lanes due East of Key Biscayne, about 14 miles out.
Here she is...


And here's my buddy Ramon holding it a little higher since he got to watch the battle from the sidelines...