 SUPER-SIZE MY MARLIN — The fight of a lifetime with a worthy opponent — By Duarte Rato and Jerome Sedgwick
UNLIKE most of the previous week, 6th November 2009, the last day of the annual Bazaruto Marlin Invitational Competition, dawned beautifully with a light northeasterly wind. Most boats were out at first light.
Realistically, every one of the 12 boats still had a chance of winning the competition, and from our side a single fish could see us taking joint top spot. We were obviously hoping for two fish, though. This target wasn’t that farfetched and was something we have achieved a good number of times in the past off Bazaruto, including twice with the Jankowitz clan who were fishing with us for the fourth consecutive year.
With ideal weather conditions and the fact that we’d had two action-packed hours trolling konas the previous afternoon, including a rare double black marlin strike, our game-plan for the day was to cover as much ground as possible pulling lures.
By sunrise we had a beautiful spread out, and despite all the bad luck we had incurred over the last six days, everyone on board was cheerful and positive. Within 30 minutes the mood was further boosted when a 300 lb fish was spotted behind the short rigger tube. We never got a bite out of it, but it was still a good sign.
We then got a great barracuda, and at 7.30am off Sailfish Bay raised a couple of sailies. Shortly thereafter, we had a knock from what must have been a small black. The VHF come to life at around 9am with hookup and release reports from some of the other boats, but aside from one wahoo, the water had gone completely quiet for us.
Around 10am we decided to put a Halco Laser Pro in close to see if we would get bait, which we did an hour later, and we quickly rigged the 3.5kg bonnie as livebait.
We were in 45 metres of water and normally would go straight out deeper where the chances of losing the bait to sharks are lower, but since we were not far from where we’d had the strike at Sailfish Bay, we stayed in the shallow water. Twenty minutes later on the 55m mark I saw some sort of commotion behind the boat.
Suddenly, the elastic was ripped from deckie Alex’s hands, so we fed out line, but there was no pressure on the strike. We held the line, put the boat in gear, and seconds later the fish picked it up again ... this time we were on!
What followed was not a blistering run or the jump that we were all anxiously awaiting, but rather a slow, sluggish mid-water dash — very much like that of a small hammer. The fish slowly swam out to sea in an easterly direction as we circled around upwind from it, and started to pick up line. Ten minutes later it came up and thrashed around just below the surface. There was a loud chorus on the boat as six voices shouted “Marlin!”
Only the tip of the bill showed in the distance, making it difficult to judge the size, but within 15 minutes it was clear this was a very respectable fish as she swam out to sea under a heavy drag. The man in the hot seat was 69-year-old Jerome Sedgwick.
Read the full story in the March/April 2010 issue of SKI-BOAT …
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