Blue Marlin Off Vieques

If you jump off the pier in Esperanza and swim out two miles, the water will be over your head. In fact, you‘ll need to swim about 1500 feet straight down in order to touch the bottom. This is where some truly big stuff lives.

Since all my fishing on Vieques is done in the ankle-deep bonefish flats, I’ll jump at any chance to head offshore and try the Hemmingway thing. I got the chance last week when my buddy Dr. Pedro Watlington, our San Juan based vet and avid angler, ran his twenty two foot Robalo over to the island from his marina in Fajardo.

Pedro brought along his father-in-law Luis, who has spend a lot of time fishing the famous striper grounds off Montauk on his own boat. Rounding out the crew was Capt. J Fergeson , our offshore expert who runs Amity Charters right here on Vieques. Since we had a lot of blue water experience on the boat that morning, I was pretty confident that we’d be able to hook something interesting.

Pedro picked J and I up in Esperanza at 8AM and we had baits in the water thirty minutes later. We were running about three miles from shore to avoid some rain showers when we spotted a flock of diving birds. This is a sure sign of feeding fish under the surface and we could see some impressive splashes from a few hundred yards away.

Just before we reached the feeding zone, J spotted an incredibly fast rooster tail of water slicing across the surface. I couldn’t see what was causing this but the speed was amazing. Luis swung the helm to the right to get in front of the wake but the fin shot ahead of us before it could see the bait spread. In that quick moment I hung myself over the bow to get a better look. The unmistakable shape and glowing stripes of a seven foot blue marlin shot past us like a torpedo. I’ve never seen anything move so fast under the water.

We were trolling at seven knots but the birds and bait kept moving to the west a few knots quicker than that. J and Pedro decided to pull in the baits and run down sea at speed to cut them off. We started cranking in the four rods for the short, full throttle run when the water exploded about fifty feet behind our stern, right beneath the skipping ballyhoo that J was cranking in at full speed. He instantly threw the big Penn reel into free-spool and let the bait fall back. A split second later, J was pumping the short rod furiously, setting the hook into something solid. The same blue marlin launched itself through the surface right in our wake, now firmly attached to the thirty pound line.

J quickly handed the rod off to Pedro, who would fight the fish. As the most experienced marlin angler onboard, J would need his hands free to manage the line and leader once the big fish was close to the boat. Unhooking something with a yard long dagger for a nose can incredibly dangerous, and screw ups have killed people. Luis stayed at the helm and I stayed out of the way, snapping photos every few seconds.

In this part of the Caribbean, blue marlin can grow to over 1000 pounds and several of these “Granders,” as they’re called, have been landed off Puerto Rico in the last few decades. Fighting something like that can take hours on the heaviest of lines. The fish that Pedro was attached to was much smaller but still a handful on thirty pound stand-up gear.

Luis kept the boat right behind the fish as Pedro fought it from the bow. Unlike most marlin, this one wasn’t a jumper, which meant that it was saving a lot of energy and might not tire quickly. Fortunately, we were on a smaller boat that could chase the marlin and not let it rest. Within half an hour, Pedro was able to reel the mono leader up to the surface. J grabbed this heavy length of line which made the catch official. Just as he started sliding his gloved hand down the leader to get control of the fish and remove the lure, the hook pulled loose on its own. This was a perfect release and we watched the seven foot, 175 pound marlin swim away unharmed.

Blue marlin are the most beautiful and exciting offshore species in the world and catching them usually means hiring big yachts and spending big money. There really aren’t many places in the world where a small boat can run a few miles offshore and tangle with one like we did here on Vieques.