Yesterday, July 30, John Philips and his sons from San Diego released a nice Spearfish and just missed about a 200 lb Blue Marlin. Earlier this week, Scott Howard (a previous client from Las Vegas) chartered HighNoon for the 4th time. Scott has caught a wide variety of fish on HighNoon including tuna, Wahoo, striped marlin and mahi mahi. But...he had never landed a Blue Marlin. Today was the day! About 7 am, our long rigger went down and Scott got his first Blue Marlin...a great 267 lb Blue after a 30 minute struggle. His friend, Oz, hooked up a nice Spearfish later and we released it after a short but fun fight. Here is the photo:
On another recent charter, AJ Fiore from Centreville, Virgina relived his fathers experience from 25 years ago. Vicki Fiore chartered HighNoon for her sons. AJ's Dad had caught a marlin in Hawaii 25 years ago and Vicki wanted her son's to have that same experience. Vicki and her sons were on a cruise ship and were only in port for the day. We hooked up a nice 200 lb Blue about 2 pm...and AJ got it to the boat in about 20 minutes where we release it. The day before, was a fun day for Jeff Linquist and Jack Phenix from Lincoln, Nebraska. Jeff really wanted a blue marlin and we thought we had one when the short corner lure went off. With the line screaming out from the reel, Jeff got in the fight chair and began to fight the fish. When it went deep and didn't jump, I began to suspect it wasn't a marlin. About 20 minutes later, we brought up a 137 lb. Ahi (giant yellowfin tuna). Normally an Ahi would bite our smaller lures further from the boat. This one hit the biggest lure that was the closest lure to the boat. That's fishing!
On a previous charter, we took Mark and Sharon De Monaco from Sayreville, New Jersey on a full day charter. Mark and Sharon have big game fished all over the world, but Kona, Hawaii gave them quite an unusual experience. First, we landed a nice 35 lb Wahoo. Then we caught a 6 lb. skipjack tuna and rigged it up as live bait for a marlin. After a few hours of no luck with the live bait, I switched over to lure fishing. While I was watching the short corner lure, a huge Blue Marlin started following the lure. I shouted to Mark, 'short corner, short corner!~!!". The Marlin grabbed the lure and screamed out about 400 yards of line. After a 10 minute fight, the fish just came off. End of day? Not at all. Just outside the harbor, I dropped down our live bait and it was immediately inhaled by a 200 lb. Sand Bar Shark. After about a 10 minute fight, suddenly the line began screaming off the reel. Mark hung on for dear life as the line just kept peeling off the reel. All of a sudden, the pressure on the reel lightened up, and Mark brought the shark to the boat. We were all shocked to see only the head and shoulders left of the shark. A huge Tiger Shark estimated at over a 1000 lbs had grabbed the shark we were fighting and with one incredible bite, cut that shark in half!!!
