Nikao Fishing Adventures went out for 2 days specifically to target Marlin; I was pleased with this booking as it was the 2 days before the annual Durban Billfish Tournament.
The weekend before had seen some heavy NE winds, and so the water was cold and green and we saw no life in the water. Eventually when we got to the 500m canyon we found blue water and I went about the business of setting the spread, selecting lures and got us ready to fish. It took a little time as there were only 2 of us on the boat.
The current was screaming at it made things hard as the out riggers kept on snapping off and I had to tighten them up more than usual. Then I saw the brown shape a Marlin behind our spread and I was watching him intensely, he started swimming in the spread but was only inspecting the lures, after about 20 minutes he pulled the port out rigger and then let it go, I put the line back into the clip and continued and he did exactly the same to the up rigger. When he pulled the starboard rigger and let go I opened the drag of the reel and let it run about 200m when suddenly it picked up speed and I let it run another 100m or so and then tightened the drag reeled up till the tip went down and then set the hook. HOOK UP, MARLIN ON. I then handed the rig over to my guest got the reel connected to the harness and the fight was on and I slowed the boat down.
With the current screaming so fast we had the fish at the boat in around 5 minutes, and I got hold of the leader but was still not committed yet and then he gave us an aerial display right at the boat, my guest was still standing by braced for another run and I had to let go and let him run again, this time he went deep and we had to pull him up in low gear on the reel till we had the leader again. Here I pulled him to the boat and grabbed his bill. He was not that happy and put up a big performance and I had to hang on tightly for a while before he calmed down. Photos were taken and the hooks removed. I let my client stroke him and then we thanked him and released him safely. It was a beautiful Black Marlin estimated at about 150Kg (330lbs).
The next day was similar and we had 3 different Marlin playing in our spread unclipping the riggers but we had no Marlin hook up, we then had a Sailfish do exactly the same and we hooked him up and had him on for a short time when he dropped the lure on a jump.
