ANOTHER FISHING LESSON......

We have fished for about everything here in Bimini except for Blue Marlin. The Big Game Club billfish tournament was just finishing up and they had caught and released a few so we decided to try it. I had talked to Freddie about it a couple times and decided to see how the "old schoolers" would fish for them. Of course as with everything we fish for with him, he wanted to rig up some horse Ballyhoos.  We also found a couple Spanish Mackeral. We rigged everything with wire and skirts except the Mackeral which we rigged naked (we weren't naked, the bait was without a skirt). We ran out to about 800 feet of water and started trolling. We put the naked Mackerals on the Penn 80's on the riggers and the rigged Hoos on the TLD 50's on the corners on flatline clips. We immediately had a couple chicken Dolphin playing with our baits so we put out a Billy Bait on the shotgun position from the bridge. We had a couple hits, thought to be Wahoo because the way the baits were bitten off which by the way finished off our naked Mackerals. Then we had a slammer Dolphin, as big as any we have seen or caught hit one of our baits but spit the hook after the first jump. I think I heard Freddie say s#%t a couple times after that miss. After quite a discussion on how to proceed we finally understood what Freddie wanted us to do. The plan was to troll west weaving back and forth about 15 or 20 degrees either way for a while, then turn and head back to shore weaving back and forth as well. The idea is to troll across the Gulf Stream. Sure enough, the master was right. At about 11 o'clock, a Marlin  jumped and struck the port rigger bait. No hook up, then he struck the starboard rigger, no hook up. We brought in the starboard bait which was "old lucky" (a black and purple Moldcraft lure) rigged with a Hoo and replaced it with one rigged with a black and purple skirt. No sooner did we get it out and the Marlin was back. He attacked the bait once, no luck, then he boiled at it a second time, no luck, but the third time was the charm. FISH ON. I took the pole and was settled into the fighting chair for a long battle. Freddie just about had the rest of the lines in and CJM was reeling in the shotgun when the big guy made a move towards the boat and spit the hook. I think everyone said s#%t a few times after that. We had a few more hits, at least one we thought was a billfish by the way the bait was kind of skinned on the sides, but no more hook ups. On about our last pass inward toward shore we saw a couple birds working and sure enough they were on some nice sized Blackfin Tuna. We had one hit a rigger bait and a second one hit the shotgun. It was like a Chinese fire drill with Freddie and me holding a rod with a fish on in one hand and trying to reel in one of the other lines with the other hand. We got it all done and the fish in.  We headed in, cleaned up the boat, and seared some fresh Blackfin Tuna for dinner....

We mixed up some wasabi and soy and it was DELISH!  (This line was CJM's :) ) 

CTM