August 29, 2012 Mark and John Get Ahis and a Blue!

Mark of “In the Bite Magazine” and his good friend John joined me for a day on the Lepika.  Their goal was to catch a nice blue marlin for John who has caught a lot of sailfish but has never caught a blue marlin.  We started off close to the harbor since the bite has been in shallow along the ledge.  We worked our way south when a small blue piled on the stinger lure!  Line peeled off the 80 Fin Nor as Mark got John strapped into the fighting chair.  I backed up hard on the fish and John got the leader to me in about 15 minutes.  We safely released his first blue marlin that weighed about 130lbs!  It was still early and we continued on.  The bite went dead so I headed offshore to try some deeper water.  On the horizon I spotted a nice pile of porpoise.  Mark and John have caught ahi but nothing over a 100lbs and neither of them had seen the greenstick in action.  We ran to the pile and saw ahi jumping in front of the school chasing flying fish.  I set the greenstick up and made my first pass.  Mark and John watched as the squids bounced in and out of the water when a nice ahi blasted completely out of the water and inhaled one of the squids.  John was up and got in the chair.  The ahi dove deep and John landed his first ahi in about 15 minutes!  It weighed 110lbs!  The bite was on so we quickly reset and made another pass.  Almost instantly another big ahi blasted one of the squids, leaping all the way out of the water!  It was Mark’s turn and he quickly got in the chair.  He did a great job and landed his first and biggest ahi which weighed 146lbs!  Mark has seen some pretty incredible bites but he will definitely never forget seeing ahis flying out of the water to eat the baits off the greenstick!  It is something he will never forget!