weekly report for fishing punta cana white marlin season

[Mike Fisher]

this is the weekly fishing report from Mike's Marina Fishing Charters S.A., Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
this sunday's winner is our 40ft Searay with charter captain Luis Alberto Caridad and mate Alberto Rodriguez fishing a full day charter with Jake Walker.
leaving port 8:30AM that morning, sea very calm on a beautiful sunny day on paradise island, moon a Waxing Gibbous 88% full, rising 11:48AM today on 78' front of our east coast, lines wet 25 minutes after leaving port around 2nmls offshore.
we're mid white marlin season for our local waters so used reels are 30lbs internationals, nothing bigger than 50lbs reel with 30lbs line on, at 10:00AM they got a nice hit and hooked a out of season Blue Marlin with approximately min.200lbs of weight on a penn international 30lbs, starting a nice long fight in which the fish had several advantages over his hunters. after a 90 minutes the marlin stayed on the surface, allowed the boat to close in to picture and release the tired fighter, he showed his big effective trick, the blue jumped right behind the boat, landed on the diving plattform which we have to replace now, taking her in two nice piezes, line cutted on the sharp fiberglass edge and away he was with his ballyhoo, fish been hooked in his sword close to mouth, so he'll survife his victorious fight.
boarding several dorados(mahi mahi) since then til noon Jake hooked a nice 60lbs white marlin and fought him down, the tired but unharmed animal was released without bringing him on board, on our catch & release charters we allow pictures of the tired fish only while he's in the water, if his condition seems to be fine to release him we let him go without taking him on board. i'm happy on any advise from experienced catch & release anglers, still learning, to release a billfish is absolutely unknown on our island and Mike's Marina is the only outfitter who started a change in that behavior.
after the white marlin fight the charter took several more dorados out before heading back to coast around 4:00PM when i talked to Jake Walker via our board phone, he seemed to had a great day of fishing that lovely sunday april 9th.
to be continued
Mike