Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2018 i Marlin

Your back story is a little atypical in the sense that fishing wasn’t really in the plan when you were growing up, right? I did a lot of freshwater fishing growing up. A little saltwater stuff. My grandparents had a house on the water in Massachusetts, and back then my fish of choice was tautog. That and bluefish. How did you go from bluefish to blue marlin? A big part of that was meeting Frank Mather. Frank was a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution whose research led to the first conservation measures for Atlantic bluefin tuna in the United States. I was in high school and needed a summer job. Frank had a home in Massachusetts on the Cape, and one in Key Biscayne. That gave me the opportunity…

In the grand scheme of things, paint is really just makeup for boats. Alone, it’s not at all sexy; it looks like just another medium. But artfully applied on a perfectly faired canvas by hands that are schooled in precision, and it can turn any ordinary girl into an extraordinarily beautiful one. You might not be able to change her core personality, but you can bring out her inner beauty — and if she could talk, I’m sure she’d say thank you. Over the years, yacht paints have changed at an exponential rate. Informed consumers demand high-quality products that will take the many hardships their vessel will face in its lifetime. In addition to simple substrate protection, paint needs to be durable, repairable and beautiful, with long-lasting protection. When you…

Boat construction and materials have come a long way since ancient mariners first hollowed out a fallen tree and floated downstream. Many of us remember the early builds from Hatteras — think back to the 1960 introduction of Knit Wits; at 41 feet in length, it is considered to be the first fiberglass production boat over 30 feet, and one that is still running to this day. But did you know that the use of composite materials dates back to antiquity? IN THE BEGINNING According to scholarly research, the earliest record of composite use is generally attributed to the ancient Mesopotamians around 3400 B.C. Using their own homegrown sticky stuff, they glued strips of wood placed at different angles to one another, and voilà: plywood was born. The use of…

Construction is now underway on Tarheel, a 62-foot GameBoat from North Carolina’s Bayliss Boatworks. The GameBoat series sport-fishers are designed to be fished hard with minimal maintenance, and incorporate speed, versatility and simplicity in their designs. Tarheel will feature a sleek profile with hardtop and white brow plus a plethora of faux-teak components, including toe rail, drip molding and transom. The layout will consist of a three-stateroom two-head design, with an easily accessible day head and huge tackle room located just off the main companionway. Systems will include a pair of Northern Lights 20 kW generators, an FCI 1,800-gallon-per-day watermaker, two Seakeeper 6 gyrostabilizers and a Dometic chilled-water air-conditioning system, which is now standard on all Bayliss builds. A pair of MTU 12V M96L engines, each producing 1,920 hp, will…

Recreational boating is unique in that most jurisdictions allow consumers to purchase a vessel and use it without training or licensing of any kind. Regardless of experience, all boaters should be familiar with the Navigation Rules of the Road, which are essentially right-of-way rules to assist boaters in avoiding collisions on the water. The rules are formalized in the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea and the Inland Navigation Rules Act, collectively known as the Rules of the Road. The COLREGS are applicable on waters outside established navigational lines of demarcation, while the Inland Rules apply to vessels upon the inland waters of the United States. BOAT TRAFFIC CAN BE INTENSE I was in Morehead City, North Carolina, during the 2018 Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament…

+ BITE TRACKER Stay current with the best bites from the top billfish destinations around the globe at marlinmag.com/travel. WHERE OCTOBER signals a shift in the fishing action around the world. The heavy-tackle black marlin season in Cairns, Australia, is shaping up to be a great one this year, offering anglers the best shot at the marlin of a lifetime. In the southern Caribbean, the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao should see great mixed-bag fishing for blues, whites and sails, while the striped marlin bite off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, will also be red-hot.…

Have you ever wondered how much commercial fishing actually takes place on the planet’s oceans? Unlike agriculture and forestry, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to get a good handle on the spatial and temporal footprint of commercial fishing. And while it’s true some fleets do have vessel monitoring, logbooks and onboard observers, these data have previously only provided a patchwork glimpse of how commercial fishing operates on a global level. However, new technology in the form of the automatic identification system now allows researchers to quantify the behavior of global fishing fleets, right down to individual vessels. A research study published in the journal Science earlier this year processed 22 billion AIS messages and tracked more than 70,000 industrial fishing vessels from 2012 to 2016 to develop a…

As my flight descends, I peer out at an alien landscape below. A volcanic island juts out of the Atlantic Ocean, with its cliffs rising at steep angles from the surrounding blue water. From above, the island looks like a rugged one, mostly reddish-brown rock with a few sandy beaches dotting the coast. To the northwest, I see another island, but its view is partially obscured by a sandy haze: dust from the vast Sahara Desert, 350 miles to the east. The wheels of the plane touch down with a squealing chirp, and I arrive at my destination for the next three and a half months: Cape Verde, Africa. The terrestrial landscape I observed through my plane’s window, however, is not what brought me to this remote archipelago; rather, it’s…

Handcrafting 100 custom sport-fishers is a memorable milestone, achieved by only a select few in the boatbuilding community. In fact, you can count them on one hand. Paul Spencer and his highly talented team at Spencer Yachts in Wanchese, North Carolina, joined those rarefied ranks with the launch of Centurion, a gorgeous 74-footer that has once again raised the bar in terms of performance, craftsmanship and jaw-dropping good looks. I headed to Port Aransas, Texas, along with Marlin freelance photographer Scott Kerrigan, where we met up with Spencer and Centurion skipper Capt. Pete Rae. At first glance, it’s clear this boat is a departure from several current trends, starting with her transom and toe rail. While many builders, including Spencer, offer either genuine teak or a faux-teak painted finish on…

Some boats we name after the wife or kids. Others we name after a “reel” thing in our lives, and there are more than a few puns too. Take the world-famous Chunda, the name of Stewart Campbell’s boats: “chunda” is Aussie slang for puking. Jerry Dunaway saw The Hooker on a boat in Australia and called the owner to ask if he could use it on his own boat back in Texas. Jerry was in the TV-and-appliance rental business; he just liked the name, meaning to hook fish, but the girl logo meant something else entirely. There was a boat in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when I was young called Upyrs II that I thought was a good one. Wet Dream was the No. 1 name for a boat a few…

HOLD ON TIGHT Wiring a feisty marlin is an adrenaline rush unlike any other in offshore fishing. Grabbing a fistful of leader with a hot blue jumper on the other end isn’t for the inexperienced, or the faint of heart. Jake Graves has it under control aboard Jeff Cohen’s 69-foot Spencer, Da Bait; we are right in the midst of the action thanks to veteran photographer Scott Kerrigan. LOCATION The team was fishing one of the distant seamounts off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. TECH SPECS CAMERA: Sony 1D X LENS: Sony 16-35mm ISO: 200 APERTURE: f/2.8 SPEED: 1/1250 sec…

Capt. Chuck Lindner and boat owner Robert Warren had not missed fishing in the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament in 38 consecutive years. Having had ankle surgery just weeks before, Warren was unsure he would be able to participate in the 2018 event, but a few days before the kickoff, his doctor gave him the go-ahead. Lindner knew he would have to be choosy with his fishing days and careful not to re-injure his boat owner’s ankle. “The weather was overcast and choppy,” says Lindner. “And the fishing had been slow. We were watching a good body of water heading our way — thinking we would give it a day to move in, and the weather a day to move out — so we laid the first day.” The crew…

Ballyhoo are the worldwide mainstay of a good dead-bait spread. We rig them using many different methods and then pull them either naked or with various accouterments to increase the footprint or effect of the bait in the water. DEAD RINGER I ran across an interesting product recently and decided to give it a shot: the Ringer Swivel by Turner Tackle. This is a take on the standard circle-hook rigs using either swivels or rubber O-rings, with a twist — a 360-degree one. A rubber grommet is incorporated into the eye of a very high-quality barrel swivel, giving the circle hook 360-degree access to find the corner of the fish’s jaw — right where it’s supposed to be — and a perfect hook-set. This product combines the swivel and rubber…

I HAVE LOVED ELECTRONICS EVER SINCE LOWRANCE/EAGLE INTRODUCED ITS FIRST HANDHELD GPS, WITH ABOUT A HUNDRED BUTTONS ON IT, BACK IN 1995. BEFORE THAT, I TOOK A CELESTIAL NAVIGATION COURSE WITH A LONGTIME BUDDY AND HIS DAD IN 1988; WE WERE PLANNING TO SAIL TO SPAIN BUT NEVER MANAGED TO PULL IT OFF. I ALWAYS SAW GPS AS CELESTIAL, BUT WITH SATELLITES INSTEAD OF PHOTON BOMBS IN THE SKY. AND IT’S INCREDIBLE TO SEE HOW FAR THE MARINE ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY HAS ADVANCED. ¶TODAY’S MULTIFUNCTION DISPLAYS ARE BIGGER, THE PROCESSORS ARE FASTER BY A LIGHT-YEAR AND THE FUNCTIONALITY IS MORE INTUITIVE AND PRACTICAL THAN EVER BEFORE. SONAR SYSTEMS ARE ON THE VERGE OF PROVIDING EYES-IN-THE-WATER CLARITY THAT JUST STUNS THE SENSES. RADAR, TOO, IS STEPPING AWAY FROM TRADITIONAL NORMS, AS DIGITAL…

The first boatbuilders installing pod-drives in the early to mid-2000s weren’t putting them on sport-fish boats. The first American company to install the Volvo Penta Inboard Performance System was actually Tiara. I had the opportunity to run several different boats at Volvo’s test center in Gothenburg, Sweden, during the company’s international press launch, and there is no doubt I was intrigued by the system. Pod-drives are not a new concept. I had seen massive tugboats using a similar pod-drive system for their tight-quarters work, pushing huge container ships into the wharf. But this was a first for the recreational segment of the marine industry, and there was a lot of buzz and excitement. The biggest thing marketed to promote the system was its efficiency compared to a regular shaft and…

When an extremely knowledgeable boat owner knows what he wants, he seeks out a builder who can turn those concepts into reality. North Carolina’s Tim Winters was tasked with creating a dream machine to accommodate a family of four, plus crew, for anything they might want to pursue. First Light was designed to be the epitome of an express design, with a big-boat feel and a yachtlike interior. It is safe to say she did not disappoint after her two-and-a-half-year build. As I walk down the dock to see First Light for the first time, it seems she is versed in optical illusion. From afar, her massiveness is shadowed by the design. Without scale, the Winter 65 looks like a typical North Carolina express, flared in the bow with those…