February 23, 2013 – 673lb Blue For Dusty and Denise!

Dusty and Denise are celebrating their 6th wedding anniversary here in Kona.  Dusty is a charter boat captain from Charleston, South Carolina and really wanted to catch some big ahi.  Dusty is also good friends of Keith who was crewing for me today.  We left the harbor before the sun came up and found a big pod of porpoise just as the sun came up.  I didn’t see any marks of fish in the pod so we headed father into the ledge.  There we found another pile of porpoise, but again no signs of tuna in them.  I decided to head back offshore into the deep and retrace our path from earlier in the morning hoping another pod was father back.  As we crossed the 1000 fathom line a big hole opened up behind the short corner bait just 15 yards behind the boat!  The line snapped off the rigger and peeled off the reel as the big blue headed for the horizon.  It didn’t jump until it was about 300 yards away so none of us knew how big she was, but we knew she was over 500lbs.  Line was disappearing at an alarming rate so we turned and chased the fish going forward.  Denise was already buckled into the fighting chair and cranking as hard as she could to keep tension on the line.  The fish was now about 700 yards out and still going!  We had less than 200 yards of line on the reel before the fish settled down and we were only 5 minutes into the fight!  Denise settled into her fight trying to gain a few feet at a time on the marlin.  She fought the fish hard for about 2 hours before her body started to hurt.  Keith and Dusty helped her as she continued the rest of the fight.  The fish went deep and the battle got even harder as she had to deal with a lot of lifting and cranking.  For the last hour (yes, a 3 hour fight time) Keith turned the crank and Dusty held Denise in the chair.  Finally, the fish was at the boat!  The marlin had died during the fight and we had been battling dead weight for about 15 minutes.  The fight had taken us just over 3 hours and we landed her more than 2 miles from where we hooked up!  Denise was exhausted and sore but she hung in there like a champ!  Her 1st ever blue marlin would hit the scales at 673lbs!  That’s a big anniversary present!