Delighted to be invited by skipper/owner James Taylor for a run on his beautiful ‘Black Rat’, this week:
James had a plan:
As usual, we would be fishing some lever drags, but mostly Penn Senator star drag reels. James even uses Senators for his teaser reels:
No bait catching! No stopping at the FAD. Straight out to the 140 metre mark, where the Garmin showed lots of activity down deep:
Just my opinion and I have no idea why. But I reckon the further you are offshore, the more important the tide change is. Have proven that true on kingfish at the 100 metre reefs many times. Our first strike came right on the tide change:
After the usual hard fight, we tagged and released a solid striped marlin:
Video here:
Interestingly, the tail hook on the lure partially straightened:
Lures back in the water, and the second strike came fast. This time, a smaller black marlin in perfect condition. Hans on the rod:
A strong current line developed, with smooth water on the eastern side and ripples on the western side. The edge was marked by a spume line. Occasionally bait would show on the surface:
At one point we got all excited, thinking we had found a private FAD. But it wasn’t attached to a rope! Just drifting along in the current:
Results for the morning were 7 marlin spotted 3 free jumpers 4 strikes 2 hook ups 2 marlin brought to boat Wonderful day, and looking forward to doing it all again on Sunday. As always will report in live on the Instagram and Facebook pages if anything interesting happens. Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow