Big Game Fishing - Jigging - Popping worldwide

hello david and all the others,

you are right with your observation of the marlin beeing very aggressive some days and some days less. i would love to find out if we hook and / or catch same fish several times, but i believe it's not happening that often. i believe more in following; when we find that spot with many marlin around, they just came into that area due to the "table is full with food" and wherever they came from, they might not have eaten for some days ? so they pick up with filling their stomaches due to they might be hungry. of course they stay for a while before they disapear to the next "feeding place". so maybe that could be the reason why they are more aggressive in the first days and than they take it more easy and lazy the following days. maybe i'm right, maybe not, thats all theorie, but exactely that makes us fisherman having those fine nights sitting together and talking/discussing about the pro & contra of rigs, lures, speeds aso.......and the good thing is, that everybody has his own experience and meanings, so those themes will never stop and allways will be interesting for everybody, and it won't become booring !

yesterday the american caught 2 for ? and zak went 2 for 2 and again a beauty ~750 pounder! ferdy went blank....

we've got a canceling for the last week in june, one of the hottest fishing times here, on HAPPY HOOKER 1 with capt. BONZE. last week free, so don't wait and catch that week ! whoever comes first will be in.

tight lines,

berno

hi david,

guess you want me to be honest, don't you ?: ok, the wheather is nice and warm as allways, but out at sea it was the hell for all the fleet yesterday. all boats together left the south at midday to get back to mindelo harbour, it was impossible to fish any longer ! even the americans with that 78 footer had enough and turned back home first of all ! we had windspeeds up to 35 knots in the harbour and as i know the channel for so many years i would bet they had up to 50 knots in there. early morning was still not that bad and two boats caught 2 blues each and one boat caught one blue. two boats went blank.

today it looked much better this morning, but from midday on again the windspeed increased and the fleet was back at 4 o' clock allready this afternoon. only one boat had a marlin in the spread but no bite, so 00000 for all today.

one boat is still fishing sao nicolao and ferdy talked to them two days ago; still green water there in the south so they fished the last days out of ihla razo seeing one fish a day.

tight lines,

berno

I bet Marty is happy for him.

Success with his own lures (of course). I look forward to meeting him in a couple of weeks.



Roger

Quoted from "dvdgoli"

Capt Berno

I am reading that one of the boat of Didier Jeanne claims a striped marlin capture in Mindelo waters during past days

Looking at the picture Didier showed at his website...could be a small blue instead???

Would be the first time I hear about stripey caught up north in atlantic ocean.

What do you think??



David

Well David there is an old Anglo Saxon truism, ‘Never say Never’.

And I can remember my initial shock/disbelief when on hooking what I thought would be a Roosterfish off Isla Coiba, Panama – in the Pacific – a Tarpon, Megalops atlanticus, jumped. But since then any number of our Club members have hooked them in the Pacific resulting on one finally landing one (image attached) in Pinas Bay, Panama (Tropic Star Lodge) last August. In the case of Tarpon though, especially immature fish, they are quite capable of living in waters with low salinity or even freshwater. So the supposition is that the original population made the transition – Caribbean to Pacific – through the Panama Canal.

And, on that same trip, we landed a small Tuna which the crew just viewed as ‘bait’, a Bonito. When pressed, they suggested it was an odd coloured Black Skipjack. But, on closer examination, it had small conical teeth, and we subsequently identified it as a Kawakawa, literally thousands of miles away from their normal distribution range in the west and central Pacific.

But Marlin? Um ….

So, Blues and ‘Stripies’ are superficially remarkably similar other than, in relative terms, a higher dorsal fin that – in the case of a Striped Marlin - equals or sometimes exceeds the fish’s body depth. Didier though has seen lots of Blue Marlin and this patently was something different, to his mind something unusual.

Was it smaller than the normal run of fish? That may, assuming it was a juvenile Blue, have accounted for the proportions of the dorsal being bigger than normal. I recall once whilst fishing Venezuela in a Club tournament one of our members releasing a 70lb billfish. What was it? Well patently not a White, that’s fairly easy to identify. It was a very small Blue, much smaller than the normal run of fish they encounter.

Or could Didier’s fish have been a hybrid, a cross between a Blue and a White? I’m really uncertain of what research, if any, has been conducted. Or was it a Hatchet Marlin? Some research has indicated that this, for long described as a ‘White Marlin variant’, is a separate species. The fin tips – the dorsal and pectorals – are apparently less rounded.

Which I suppose brings us back to Didier’s original assertion, it was a Striped Marlin. So where are the closest populations? The Indian Ocean coast of South Africa and, of course, the Pacific coast of Central America. To my mind everything suggests that the waters would have been too cold for fish to have travelled around the Cape of Good Hope, from Indian to Atlantic. But I do recall seeing a rather ancient picture of what appeared to be a Black Marlin caught off St Helena in the South Atlantic. Um … The other even more remote possibility of lava (?) or fry making the transition through the Panama Canal would require them to survive in freshwater.

So that’s all a long way of saying I really don’t know. Do you have any other information though? And could you please post the url of Didier’s web site? It would be interesting to see a picture of the fish.
Dave
PS Must, at some point, respond to yours and Bernos comments about hook up ratios. Perhaps tomorrow?

Ah, after some 'googling' I've finally found an image of the fish. Is it a Striped Marlin? I guess it would be interesting to hear Bonze's - the Kiwi - comments on it. The stripes are very pronounced but we don't have a full view of its dorsal. And interestingly, with as 'lit up' a fish as that I would have expected a Striped Marlin's pectorals also to be 'glowing'. But this is from someone who's NEVER caught (or even fished for) Striped Marlin! As I said it will be interesting to get Marty or Bonze's view.

hi again everybody and especially to roger, welcome !

let me please start with david first; here you find two quite resonable wheather-forecast homepages, but remember: its only a forecast!!! when they say its rough, its usually rough, when they say its calm, its usually calm, but in between calm and rough forecast, you'll find a choice of 50 % to get the wind right.

http://www.wetteronline.de/segel.htm

when open, click on "AFRIKA", than on "ATLANTIK", than on "KAPVERDEN" and than on the islands you are interested in. its a german homepage, but i'm sure you will find your way through it. any trouble, let me know and i will help you to succeed, even as my german is not the very best ;-)

here's the second homepage i use with an 5 days forecast, but allmost the same as above:

http://www.windfinder.com/report/mindelo

regarding the "STRIPED MARLIN", or should i better call it a "LIT UP STRIPED BLUE MARLIN" ? no more comments, ahhh, just won a case of beer the other day from a dutch angler as he bet with me he caught a KINGMAKEREL in the channel. next day he showed me the picture of his catch and one hour later he braught me the lost bet, cheers & smile !

hey PJ dave, i must agree with "say never never", i caught two shortbill spearfish here in cape verde waters allready, but you will find nowhere written that they excist here..........should have taken them in to show the proof, but released them with my mates having trouble to get the hook out. where to hold them ? i had a close look on them; no earlier juvenile injuries, no broken off bill, just no bill at all, like a wahoo's jaw. would bring the next one in and take close pictures, but all that happened in the first two years here and than never again caught one of them, only the common longbill spearfish. many years ago we caught one of these hybrids; 50 % like a white marlin and 50 % like a spearfish............guess that must have been the one you mentioned, the "HATCHED MARLIN" ? will try to find the pics i made, scan them and send em to this forum, allready courious to read what you guys believe it was. just hoping that i still have them somewhere.

by the way: did anybody of you know that we catch "BONEFISH" here ????? true or am i lying ?

tight lines,

berno

Ah … well Berno this is where I have to reveal a secret about my ancestral roots. My Great-Grandfather – Guiseppe – and Great, Great Grandfather – Manfreddo - on my Father’s side, were Italian. Does that explain why David and I were so, so diplomatic? Of course, in my humble opinion, you’re absolutely right that’s exactly what that so-called ‘Striped’ Marlin was.

Um … what are the chances of collecting yet another crate of beer, this time from Didier though?

Anyway, that’s that sorted.

It will certainly be interesting to see the image of your ‘strange’ Marlin. Previous pictures I’ve seen on the Web of them, so-called Hatchet Marlin, are a bit inconclusive – they look like Spearfish. There’s one on this link.

But there’s a drawing of one on this site and I have to say it does, superficially, look like a hybrid - a cross between a White Marlin and a Spearfish. They’re both from the Tetrapturus genus.

Here though interestingly, a reference to Hatchets being a separate species, it notes they are also referred to as Roundscale Spearfish.

Now Cape Verdean Bonefish, this is where I might be walking into a trap. A joke, a jolly jape or vhino veritas? (Now there I've probably jumbled Italian and Portugese!) I haven’t heard of one before but there’s absolutely no reason why they’re now found off your shores. They are certainly widespread in distribution BUT normally only angled for in shallow water. But for some while I remember one of the IGFA records, taken on bait, came from Hawaii and I recall another taken in 40 plus metres of water from Thailand. So it’s back to the ‘Never say Never. By the way, not that I’m a ‘doubting Thomas’ but do you have a picture of one?
Dave

Quoted from "dvdgoli"

Dave

glad you have some italian blood in your veins...

Surely you miss their name due to a typing mistake ......

Anyway Giuseppe and Manfredo seems better then Guiseppe and Manfreddo

Peace

David Viani

Whoops, thanks for those corrections David. The information came from a UK Marriage certificate I'd located as part of my ancestry research. Many people back in the mid-19th century couldn't write so those misspellings were, I guess, the official's approximation. I'm sure as well the surname was also 'suspect', whether it ended with an E as noted, or more likely an I. The one thing I have been able to 'glean' though is that the family farmed in the area around Bardi. (That was the site if I'm not mistaken where the last of Hannibal's war elephants died on their strategic retreat back to Spain.)

Any rate with 'mixed' blood, there's Irish as well, I can on occasions struggle when deciding which of the rugby teams to support in the Six Nations Championship!

Best regards
Dave

Many Thanks David, I will track that through. Given that it was, on both my Great-Grandparents wedding certificate and Grandfather’s birth certificate, spelt as Guarniere I had for some time assumed – until I found reference to Bardi - that it was of Huguenot origins, Protestants from either France or Holland.

Anyway back to the hook-up ratios. There was both yours and Berno’s point about aggressive feeding during those first few days. I’m sure that’s accurate. The oceans are often described as ‘deserts containing oases’. And although predators obviously do shadow pelagic fish shoals present in the currents on their ocean wanderings it’s only really when they get to structure – banks, shoals and sea mounts – that they find bait in plenty. Then they’re likely to stay in that area for a period of time.

I just wonder whether any of the skippers or anglers that regularly fish Cape Verdean waters have ever had any tag returns to illustrate the movement of fish? It’s just that I recall, and apologies because it’s literally a sample of ONE, one of my friends – Ted Legg – who skippered a boat out of Horta in the Azores for several seasons, tagged a Blue and then exactly a month later re-captured that same fish on another bank less than 20 miles away.

So, how long will Marlin stay in an area?

Linked to that some years ago I had the opportunity to fish with a French angler cum photographer, Gerard Aulong, in Ascension Island. Whilst we were fishing Bait ‘n’ Switch for Blues Gerard was filming underwater using a camera just in front of one of the teasers. Now again, other than Gerard ‘glued’ to the camera monitor, no one spotted it but a Sailfish appeared under the teaser, tracked it and then disappeared. Gerard had also seen that happen on a number of occasions whilst filming off Ghana with Blue Marlin.

So are these ‘resident’ fish learning? Does the engine noise and propeller wash attract them but then, having seen that lure (or one with that action) before, they ignore it and ‘sink down’ again? Certainly with Trout in freshwater you will often find that as soon as you change a fly they’ll immediately take it. Just something different, or acting differently? So should we, given the boats working the same broad area, we be considering changing lures more frequently? Would this bring more hook-ups from what are obviously at times loads and loads of Marlin in that Channel? Or would baits work? I recall Simon starting to experiment fishing a ‘Panama Strip’ in the shotgun position behind his lure pattern.

But I guess, coming back to my original point, it was the ratio of hook-ups to releases. And again for those who haven’t seen Gerard’s Ghana DVD it’s well worth viewing the way Marlin strike lures. Most seem to track a specific lure and then strike from the inside of the pattern out. And a number did appear to catch the leader, just in front of the lure’s face, on their bill as they turned. Some resulted in hook-ups, some didn’t.

So would smaller trail hooks, not on a stiff rig, resulting in that hook lodging into the bone of their bill on those smaller fish rather than necessarily ‘looping’ round it? Would that possibly increase the ratio of successful releases?

Or would fishing lighter initial ‘strike’ drags have an effect. Those of you who might have fish with Roddy Hays will recall that he favoured fishing with extremely light drag settings. He would, with a count of five, let the Marlin turn away from the boat before pushing the drag up to ‘proper’ strike, one third of the line’s breaking strain. And, for those who haven’t tried that, believe me it works with hard or soft headed lures the fish are reluctant to let go.

So, in concluding, like the others I really don’t know. After all it’s a great topic for discussion at the bar in the evening! And if there wasn’t such a mystery in fishing perhaps we wouldn’t be as keen to keep going back.

Tight lines
Dave

well david,

you hit the point ! guess nobody else could have written that down as you did !

no doubt about you, you're a 1000 % marlin-fisherman with all the skills !!!

bonefish in cape verde; yep, there are occassionally bonefish caught here. i couldn't allmost believe it when i saw one in a net together with hundreds of makerels. one was caught on fly while shorefishing on the beach of tarafal in the south of santo antao some years ago.

don't know about the results today less HAPPY HOOKER 1 pulled the hooks on a blue.

yesterday the americans caught 1 for 3, simon 0 for 2, amelia with capt. marty 1 for 1, bonze 0 for 0 but a hoo on light tackle and ferdy went blank.

Quoted from "marlinberno"

bonefish in cape verde; yep, there are occassionally bonefish caught here. i couldn't allmost believe it when i saw one in a net together with hundreds of makerels. one was caught on fly while shorefishing on the beach of tarafal in the south of santo antao some years ago.

Thanks for confirming that Berno. It really does go to demonstrate the impact of those huge trans-Atlantic currents on fish populations. I guess their impact is probably though most apparent with the 'cross over' in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna populations.

In terms of Marlin tags I just wondered whether you'd had any returned from your boats' releases?
Dave