Attorney At Law: Gone Fishin'

We left the dock the next morning with a beautiful blue sky and a calm deep blue ocean. Two hours later we were twenty miles offshore and out of sight of Walkers Cay when the long right-rigger tag line’s rubber band snapped with a loud pop. All we could see was a big white splash of water on the surface of the calm ocean. The 80-pound test line was screaming off the reel. Al ran to the rod, lifted it out of the rod holder and maneuvered himself into the fighting chair. He started winding. His winding was ineffective; line was still pouring off the reel. Then the fish jumped; it was a huge blue marlin. Vicente had promptly cleared the cockpit of the other rods and reels, and I started moving the Sly Fox backwards as fast as the boat would go. Al kept winding, gaining only a small amount of line. We could see that this marlin was a big one. He was jumping in and out of the ocean, one leap after another, a dozen times or more. Clouds of black smoke came from both engines, as we desperately tried not to get spooled. The marlin went underwater and out of sight for a few minutes giving us the opportunity to gain some line back on the reel. Then the marlin surfaced again and started frantically jumping and leaping in and out of the ocean another dozen times. I had never seen a blue marlin, large or small, jump that many times in such a short period. After more than four sequences consisting of a dozen or more leaps, the marlin seemed to have settled down on the surface. I continued backing down towards the marlin. Al was able to retrieve most of the line, yet the marlin was still a good two hundred yards astern. The marlin seemed to be swimming away, at least that was what I thought. In all this excitement and not having a second mate on board, we decided that it would be best for me to come down from the bridge and be the one to stroke the marlin with the flying gaff, when Vicente grabbed the monofilament leader. Vicente prepared two flying gaffs, laying one on the port and one on starboard side of the cockpit. That was our immediate game plan to handle the situation without a second mate. Al continued winding on the reel until the marlin was close enough to the boat so that Vicente could grab the leader. Hastily, I put the boat in neutral and hustled down the ladder to the cockpit, picked up a flying gaff and moved in front of Vicente in order to stick the marlin with the gaff. Looking overboard into the ocean I saw this huge marlin just lying there on its side, not fighting. It had jumped its heart out and seemed to be dead, and there was no need to gaff the marlin. Al got out of the fighting chair; he took a look at the marlin just lying there, dead in the ocean. After opening the cockpit’s tuna door, the three of us pulled the marlin onto the cockpit deck and continued fishing for the rest of the day. At the weigh-in scale at the end of the day’s fishing, the marlin was hung up and tipped the scale at five hundred thirty two (532) pounds, putting us in first place.