Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Marlin

Good deckhands are a rare breed: part fish hawk, part showman, and a critical part of any sport-fishing operation. It’s a high-profile job that often includes traveling to the world’s best fishing destinations, but dig a little deeper and you will find a different reality. Professional mate Johnny Fuentes takes us on a guided tour of his world. The 24-year-old Fuentes grew up in Fort Pierce, Florida, where he earned his first job fishing with Capt. Glenn Cameron, working as a tower spotter aboard Floridian in local sailfish tournaments. Through hard work and dedication, Fuentes was able to parlay that position into a full-time job on J-Hook under Capt. Michael Dewey Price. He has now been working aboard Shoe, a 62-foot Spencer captained by Devin Silas, for four seasons. With…

Now celebrating its 80th anniversary, the Silver Sailfish Derby in West Palm Beach, Florida, is the world’s oldest sailfish tournament, as well as one of the most competitive. Much has changed since that first event, hosted by the West Palm Beach Fishing Club in 1935, but the sailfish still migrate past that stretch of Florida’s east coast just as they have done each season for hundreds of years. And the competitive fire of the anglers who chase them still burns just as brightly as it did eight decades ago. One adage in tournament fishing still holds true today as well: Make every bite count. That was the key to success for this year’s winning team, fishing aboard Double Take, a beautiful 67-foot American Custom Yacht that is homeported in Key…

I noticed my live threadfin herring was getting nervous as I was letting it back into the spread, and the quick run that followed signaled my bait had been picked up. After a quick drop-back, I came tight to a sailfish that immediately jumped acrobatically into the air. In no time, we had the fish alongside the boat for a couple of pictures and a quick release. I was just 16 years old at the time and, like most anglers, the fish was my introduction to the billfishing world. Sailfish are Florida’s most prolific billfish species and, depending on where you are around the state, there are many different ways captains and anglers target them — they really should call sailfish, not largemouth bass, the state fish. The ocean contours…

WHERE FLORIDA: The Sunshine State hosts big numbers of sailfish this month. From Key West to Islamorada in the Florida Keys, up to Miami and north to Stuart, these light-tackle gamesters will take center stage, especially after a passing cold front. Target sails using live bait suspended beneath kites or by trolling a spread of small circle-hooked ballyhoo behind dredges and teasers to produce more bites.…

While lures and dead bait will fool game fish on a regular basis, there’s no substitute for the real thing. Few species will pass up a frisky live bait: It’s an incredibly effective technique for sailfish as well as mahimahi and tuna — and even marlin. But there’s much more to suspending a live bait from a kite than just pinning one on a hook and tossing it over the side. For a few insider tips, we enlisted the help of Jeff Scott, captain of The Sailsmen Fishing Team and a veteran of the South Florida sailfish circuit. We also checked in with Capt. Jimbo Thomas of the Miami-based charter boat Thomas Flyer for his thoughts. “For the kite baits, we usually start with goggle-eyes on the long lines farthest…

JON PILCHER had a vision: If they catch swordfish on the bottom in 1,500 feet of water off Florida during the day, we should be able to do the same in the Northeast Canyons. An emergency-room doctor by day and an offshore fisherman by passion, Jon spent years chartering and learning deep-dropping techniques for swordfish that were first pioneered in Florida. I was his neighbor and friend — and a fishing buddy with the right boat — so I became one of his partners in the passion to make that vision a reality. I remember the day like it was yesterday: It was June 26, 2014, out in the Atlantis Canyon, some 105 nautical miles from home in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The conditions were perfect, a bluebird day with flat-calm, cobalt-blue…

I can still see the two greyhounding blue marlin — a doubleheader with one fish significantly larger than the other — leaping in near-perfect unison across the water’s surface in a series of jumps that defy imagination (and gravity). There was also the incredible teaser bite we had on a different occasion: The enraged 250-pound blue came into the spread and ate the starboard-side squid chain with such a vengeance that it threatened to rip the halyard completely off the outrigger. When that fish inhaled the pitch bait just a few feet off the transom, you could almost hear everyone’s jaws drop open in amazement. Those vivid memories from blue marlin fishing down in Puerto Rico still resonate in my mind on a daily basis. It’s one of the top…

MTU The new 10-cylinder Series 2000 M96 engine is capable of delivering 1,361 to 1,600 hp and features enhanced acceleration characteristics and an excellent power-to-weight ratio at just over 5,000 pounds. mtu-online.com CUMMINS The SL option package for the QSB6.7 reduces the size and weight of the engine and is perfect for repowering in the 32- to 36-foot range. It comes in three power options: 355 hp, 380 hp and 425 hp. cumminsengines.com MAN This new in-line six-cylinder engine recently won the Red Dot award for excellence in design quality. The engine comes in two power options, 800 hp and 730 hp, and both are ideal for boats up to 55 feet in length. engines.man.eu VOLVO PENTA The new D8 is an in-line six-cylinder engine that is available for both…

Marlin recently did an online photo contest of boats backing down. Some photos were just a big splash shooting upward against the transom, and others were pictures with cockpits full of water along with some drenched anglers and deckhands. I would hope to guess these boats were catching million-dollar fish or some kind of world record. Or maybe it’s the result of this new age of catching as many fish as possible each day, and these boats were just catching small blue marlin on so-called 30-pound line. Maybe it was even a white marlin or a sailfish — but I sure hope these boats might have been fishing in a tournament backing down like that. Also, what do the marine insurance executives think when seeing photos like this? I would…

REEF MAGIC Photographer Marco Canu was fishing aboard Hot Shot when he captured this incredible image of an estimated 400-pound black marlin leaping behind Capt. Luke Fallon’s Kekoa, a 56-foot O’Brien. LOCATION Sherrell Carter, an IGFA world-record holder, and her husband, Gary Carter, were chasing lighttackle records on the Great Barrier Reef’s Ribbon Reef No. 4 off the coast of Australia when she hooked the black on 30-pound tackle. TECH SPECS CAMERA: Canon EOS 7D LENS: Canon EF 70-200 mm f/2.8L ISO: 200 APERTURE: f/7.1 SPEED: 1/1,000 sec…

DECKED This modular storage system is secure, weatherproof and customizable, but it still allows for full use of the truck bed. The system can hold up to 2,000 pounds of additional gear on top, and each drawer has a 200-pound capacity. decked.com PORTAROD This rod-transport system fits into the bed of any truck model with its ratcheting crossbar that expands from 53 to 84 inches. The system installs easily and does not require drilling or additional modifications. It can also be locked in place for security. portarod.com ROD STEWARD This attractive storage option is perfect for vertical rod storage at home or in the tackle room. It comes in several sizes to accommodate a variety of different outfits, and the foam padding protects expensive reels. rodsteward.net CPI DESIGNS These aluminum…

Damon Chouest recently surpassed a personal milestone of 1,500 lifetime blue marlin releases as an angler, and the Chach team of Chouest, Capt. David Dalfo and mate Matt Coppoletta has now released over 1,200 blue marlin while fishing together on one vessel over the past seven years. Chouest caught the blue marlin bug in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1980s while fishing with his grandfather aboard C’est La Vie, a 55-foot Hatteras, with his brother Dino. In 1988, they chartered Alchemist on a trip to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where they caught five blues, and the die was cast: The aggressive blue marlin on the North Drop hooked Chouest deeply. Chouest was the first angler to release more than 100 blue marlin in a single…

Over the past two years, we have found ourselves working closely with friends on another half-dozen boats, loosely networking to share information and techniques. Tokatomist, Midnight Rambler, Hot Reels and Rowdy Dow are all boats we network with to learn more about this fishery. Rarely are we side by side with any of these boats on the fishing grounds, and with hundreds of miles of likely structure, we spread out to better explore and find where the fish are. After trips, we discuss techniques, baits, boat positioning, water temperature and color, and drift tactics as we mutually try to improve our ability to get on top of and ultimately land large swordfish. The Howd family on Tokatomist, a gorgeous 60-foot Ritchie Howell, is a team of three brothers and their…

For the past five or six years, integrating audio-system control through multifunction navigation displays has been the hottest trend in audio — and it’s not cooling off, especially in large battlewagons. Fusion Entertainment was first to integrate audio systems through MFDs, and it did so with Navico, the parent company of Lowrance and Simrad. “We came up with an idea to create control at the MFD,” Todd Crocker, the company’s U.S. sales manager, says when describing its Fusion-Link system. “The auto market was already doing it, and we thought it was needed on boats.” But it was easier in cars because everything is controlled by one manufacturer. In marine applications, there are multiple platforms on any one boat. So Fusion quickly seized on the only common element in marine electronics:…