Marlin August/September 2017

Iremember like it was yesterday: It was about mid-December and just about a month or so after the first issue of the redesigned Marlin appeared in mailboxes and on newsstands. The email from a reader read something along the lines of: “The Marlin of old is gone, and now you’re only focused on tweets and hashtags … or whatever they’re called.” For the first time, we had highlighted fans’ photos from Instagram and incorporated some of our fans’ Facebook comments into print. We crossed the lines of print and digital, well in this case, we brought digital — specifically social media — into the magazine. It was a change for everyone. I was alarmed at first that maybe our new look and efforts in digital and on social media had…

Marine artist K.C. Scott is no stranger to the sportfishing world — or the pages of Marlin, for that matter. We have featured his work several times as part of our annual offshore art gallery. Scott’s incredible “Where’s the Pitch” on this issue’s cover is also exciting for us because it is the first time Marlin has showcased a painting on the cover since October 2011. Scott’s inspiration for “Where’s the Pitch” came from his travels in pursuit of pelagic game fish. “We’ve all seen a hungry marlin come in on the dredge or the teaser when everyone is screaming, ‘Where’s the pitch?’” says Scott. “And I really like to see marlin come into the spread when they’re all black, not always lit up. I’ve been able to free-swim with…

HOLD ON TIGHT Kelly Dalling Fallon snapped this shot of a giant black marlin on the leader of Capt. Luke Fallon’s Kekoa. It was the classic reef scenario: A late?afternoon bite on a big bait — known as a “scaly.” Jada Holt made quick work of the fish before a healthy release. LOCATION Holt caught the black on Ribbon Reef No. 3, located on the Great Barrier Reef north of Cairns, Australia. TECH SPECS CAMERA: Canon EOS 7D Mark II LENS: Canon 24?70mm f/2.8L IS USM ISO: 400 APERTURE: f/4.0 SPEED: 1/1250 sec…

“Here’s a better picture where you can see how big she actually was …. That little lure in the corner of her mouth? That’s this head, right here.” Andy Moyes proudly displays a dirty iPhone screen and then gestures toward a shiny black-and-green Kaiwi lure. The fish is Steph Choate’s 1,018-pound blue marlin from Mozambique, and the Kaiwi is the surprisingly small lure that felled the thousand-pound fish. “I’m telling you,” Moyes says, “elephants really do eat peanuts.” Moyes’ shop is a modest little spot in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he is making completely custom lures — and doing it alone. The hopper of custom lure-makers is full. No, it’s bursting, and I can’t help but think, How can Andy’s lures be that much different? And yet they are. Trays…

Why lures? I got into making lures before I’d ever gone marlin fishing. We had a lathe in the garage. At 13 years old, I was making lures out of pill bottles. By 17, I worked as a mate. I moved to Costa Rica and ran a charter boat there; after, I bought my own charter boat. Eventually, I started running a private boat. My schedule kept me in Costa Rica for the winter, and then I’d head to the Bahamas, St. Thomas and Venezuela. It wasn’t until we started targeting the big blue marlin in the Bahamas Billfish Championship that I cared about lures. Before that, it was all dead-bait fishing. Is that where you’d experiment? Oh yeah, all the time. Every day it was something different. Playing around…

BITE TRACKER Stay current with the best bites from the top billfish destinations around the globe at marlinmag.com/travel. WHERE AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER mean terrific billfishing for a variety of species stretching from the southern Outer Banks of North Carolina all the way north past Cape May, New Jersey. A number of high-profile tournaments take place in North Carolina and the mid-Atlantic region during August, so enjoy the competition, because it will be as hot as the weather.…