The one that got away twice
Blue Marlin

A Beast from the Deep – East Coast, Far North NZ

30 December 2016 – 12:30 PM
Off the east coast of the Far North, New Zealand. We were deep-dropping for bluenose, just another day on the water. A random 37kg line gets pulled from the depths, something odd on it. Intrigue starts to build.

1:00 PM
We’ve driven a nautical mile down the line, changed out four top shots, and hauled in hundreds of meters. Then, boom — a massive blue shows itself, still attached. Battle stations!

2:30 PM
The fish is unstoppable. Drag is bumped up — doesn’t care.

3:30 PM
Drag’s now maxed out. Still running. No signs of slowing.

5:30 PM
After multiple leader grabs, and getting dragged 10 nautical miles north, it happens. The fish wins its freedom. The leader snaps. Gone.

Both crew agree: the fish was at least 3.5 meters long, a meter across the shoulders. It jumped clean out of the water, multiple times — right beside the boat. Unreal power. In hindsight, the release might’ve been the best outcome.
We lost a full spool of 80lb line, but the fish swam off looking better than when we found it.
The lure — a Bonze Angel — was returned to its original owner, who got spooled hours earlier.
Still waiting on that bottle of Canadian Club

 

The big fish that got away – sort of!

At this time of the year the gamefishing tales of the one that got away as well as some remarkable captures abound.

Few will surpass the experience of Jake Burton and his crew aboard  Gonna Sell Me who ‘hooked and fought’ a massive blue marlin in most unusual circumstances.

Just before New year Jake, his brother Silas and good friend Peter Hume – over from Aussie for a holiday – made the most of some great weather for a planned trip to target bluenose and have a troll around the ‘garden patch’ out from Houhora.

Leaving at dawn they headed out wide and put a few bluenose and gemfish on the deck when Jake pulled up his terminal tackle to find a 37kg game line snagged by the swivel. It was just after midday.

“The line wasn’t twisted or tangled around the swivel, just looped around it,” Jake explained.

Initially he thought he had snagged one of the other crew’s gear, but they were playing a fish so it wasn’t there’s.

He continued to pull a ‘fair bit’ of line into the boat, cursing he was having to ‘clean up’ someone else’s ‘mess’, until it came up tight and an ‘unidentified fish’ jumped around 50 metres away.

“I clicked as to what I thought might have happened – we had picked up the line of one of the six or seven other boats in the vicinity, but then realised no one was backing down or chasing a fish.”

The angle on the line was relatively high and it would first go slack, then tighten up in a strange fashion.

Chopping the bluenose rigs off, they quickly ‘top-shotted’ the game line onto the braid and when that was full, chopped and changed the mono onto a second rod, a Shimano TLD 50, stripping the regained mono off the first reel. This was repeated several times until they were back to within 50 metres or so of the fish and the line now secured to the TLD 50 which Jake described, along with the rod, as ‘an oldie but a goodie’.

“We knew we were relatively close to the fish because the mono had changed colour where it had been faded by use and the sunlight.”

At this point it was time to get serious. The fish had taken them over a nautical mile from where they first ‘hooked-up’, so Jake put on a Kilwell harness and put then drag up to strike at around seven kilos.

They now got quite close to the fish which seemed total unperturbed by the pressure Jake was applying. There were no spectacular runs, just steady, unrelenting progress to the north.

At one point the fish showed itself with a jump which Jake described more like a lunge, typical of a big fish struggling to clear its body of the water.

For another two-and-a-half hours it was stalemate so Jake put the drag up and applied further pressure with his hands on the spool and when this made little difference, the drag was put up to ‘sunset’, still with little effect on the fish’s progress north.

This direction changed dramatically when a school of yellowfin tuna busted up nearby and the marlin turned towards it, probably intent on a late afternoon snack. The school eventually sounded and the marlin again pointed its bill northward.

A change of tactics was called for. The boat, a 5.5m Surtees Workmate, was driven ahead of the fish and line was gained, slowly tiring the fish as it pulled against the hull and the drag.

Silas had had several shots at the leader, but was forced to drop it against the unrelenting pressure of the fish.

Had we chosen too, we would most likely have put a tag into it, but that was not the plan.”

“The last time the fish had slowed to a crawl and Silas took a couple of big wraps.

“We made the mistake of stopping the boat and it made a couple of spectacular leaps, whipped us around 90 degrees in an instant before the trace broke close to the fish’s mouth. It was over five hours since they had initially snagged the line.

The good news was the big fish was saved from certain death trailing the game line, the leader snapping off close to its mouth rather than trying to tow hundreds of metres of 37kg mono. The crew had taken plenty of footage of what was identified as a blue marlin estimated at around 3.5 metres in length and close to a metre across the shoulders.

“We crunched some numbers based on those estimates and it was scary big.”

“While we didn’t quite get the fish, we have a great story to share of the true ‘one that got away’!”

 

As a postscript, Jake has found the owner of the Bonze Angel lure and it turns out it is a farmer who lives close to him at Awanui where he has his chiropractor’s practice.

Michael Shalders and his crew, fishing aboard <ITAL>Marua<>, had the same game plan as Jake and his crew – a few bluenose drops and then a troll home. Ticking the first box, Marua was pointed towards the coast and just five minutes after the lures were set, the shotgun was crashed.

“It was a big fish and went absolutely ballistic, charging one way then another,” Michael says.

Before he knew it, the blue had emptied the Shimano Tiagra 80, spooling him.

“I was pretty gutted, not so much as losing the big fish and the lure, but that it would still be trailing all that line.”

Through the Reel Rods tackle store at Tokerau, Michael and Jake made contact and the lure has since been returned, ending an amazing journey and angling tale.

“For me it was almost a perfect ending -we lost the fish dragging all that line, only to have it set free thanks to Jake’s efforts. It is far better to have given it a chance, rather than ending up on the bottom.”