Marlin February 2019

In late November 2018, the worldwide marlin-fishing community received word via social media of an amazing catch: A huge black marlin had been landed off Lady Musgrave Island, on the southern end of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The fish, caught by Rob Crane aboard the 56-foot Viking Too Easy II with Capt. Russell Gage, had measurements that meant it might be a new Australian record. Despite being out of the water for many hours, the enormous fish weighed 1,431 pounds, making it the second-largest black marlin caught on rod and reel in Australia, and only 11 pounds behind the country’s current record, a 1,442-pound behemoth weighed by former longtime Marlin editor-at-large Capt. Peter B. Wright in 1973. Even more incredible is some recent scientific research showing that these grander-plus blacks…

BLUE MAJESTY She roams the peaks and contours of the North Drop, dodging huge sharks and feeding at will on the clouds of plentiful baitfish throughout the depths. Once hooked, she takes to the air with raw fury, propelled by a giant sickle tail and heavy, muscular body. Crashing through the wave tops, more airborne than surface-bound, a crazed oceanic acrobat. LOCATION Richard Gibson captured this moment in St. Thomas aboard Chad Damron’s 75-foot Weaver, Sodium. TECH SPECS CAMERA: Canon EOS-1D X Mark II LENS: EF100-400mm IS II USM ISO: 200 APERTURE: f/4.5 SPEED: 1/2500 sec…

Leading Palm Beach Towers, one of the top tower companies in boatbuilding, Drew McDowell is really just a regular guy. The son of an Ocean City, New Jersey, attorney, McDowell grew up detailing boats and fishing when he could during the summers. In 1983, at the age of 17, McDowell went to work for the Viking Yachts demo program as a mate. Two short years later, and while still in college, he was running that same program — which included sales, design, testing and tournament fishing — a position he held for the next 19 years. McDowell still fishes on the Viking demo tournament team as an angler, and he also travels extensively.…

When did you decide to retire as a captain and get into the tower business? After our daughter was born in 1998. My last year running the Viking demo boat was in 2002. At that time, the program required a good amount of traveling between Mexico, the Bahamas and the East Coast, and I wanted to spend more time at home with my family. What has been your most memorable tournament or fishing trip? I am fortunate to have so many great memories over the past 34 years of fishing with the Viking program, as crew and as an angler. It’s difficult to point out just one. The first summer I ran the demo, we won four tournaments. It was a very humbling and rewarding experience for a college kid.…

As Hurricane Willa made landfall just 50 miles south of Mazatlan, Mexico, 114 teams prepared to compete for the second-highest purse in Bisbee’s Black and Blue tournament history — just $127,000 behind 2006’s $4.16 million. The tournament fleet was scheduled for a shotgun start the next day, and with a full moon, they knew it was going to be interesting, as the seas of the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Cortez continued to boil. At 1:21 p.m. on Day One, Max Briggs, fishing aboard Reelin’ & Deal’n, landed a 395-pound black marlin for his team, 4 Yahoos. The fish won the daily and a whopping $645,425, but was edged out when angler Charles Lee, of the team Chinito Bonito, boated his 510-pound black on Day Three to take over first…

Competing for a total of over $600,000 in cash and prizes, the 20th annual Los Cabos Billfish Tournament fleet spent the days chatting up the radio as an average of 50 billfish per day were released in the three days of competitive fishing. The overall winner of the event was Sea Angel, scoring 1,700 points. The team didn’t weigh any fish, but thanks to their one blue marlin and 28 striped marlin releases, they were able to hold on to the top spots in the overall team division and overall release-points jackpot. Plus, they won the Day Two release-points jackpot. The team, consisting of Capt. BC Angel; Andrea, Greg and Austin Angel; Chase Travers; Fico Ortega; and Juan Carlos Buenes, earned $113,500 for their efforts and an invitation to the…