Favorite fish stories with action photos

[MI Ben]

Admittedly an excuse to relate one of my best fishing experiences, but I'd love to see what other dramatic tales (with action pics if possible) can be generated by this crew.

I'll start!

I went to Costa Rica last year to escape real life, setting up shop for 3 days of offshore fishing on the west coast. It was late August, still in the rainy season but all that means is a dramatic shower every afternoon. Having been a fresh water and flats guy growing up, my goal was to finally catch a fish that was bigger than me.

I was told by my captain and crew (through our language barrier) that we would undoubtedly raise a good number of sails, could count on some dorado and tuna, and had a shot at blue marlin. Though they catch the billfish year round there, my timing was not ideal for sheer numbers or size in the marlin department.

The gods were smiling on my outing. To the surprise of my crew we found the sea low on sails and dorado but alive with blue marlin. The excitement grew as I brought in 3 blues the boat located for me. The first was estimated at 150 lbs, the second 250 lbs, and the last 200. Gorgeous, all.

I was satisfied with achieving my goal (I weigh 180 and we turned the ship toward home on my last day. Earlier we had picked up a 4 lb tuna on a light rig, and I had joked with the crew that we should use it as bait. Our spanglish mantra as we put it in the box was "big bait, big mahhlin!! (laughter)". Well at the end of the day I called them out on that joke and had them reluctantly replace one of the modest mullet(needlenose?) rigs with our hapless tuna.

5 minutes...10 minutes...BOOM!! Meyhem and shrieking from the flybridge, a frantic dive at the tuna rod and a team effort at getting my standing belt buckled, adrenaline and fear fear fear. My now VERY animated coaches screamed "Is BLACK, is black mahliiin!"

An hour and ten minutes of sheer, no fighting chair, 150% effort later we had her by the leader and soon my boatside-estimated 600 lb black marlin on her way back to the depths and and buuuurned into my memory, film and muscles forever.

"Big bait, BIG MAHLIN!"

This is my favorite fighting fish image of all my angling years Hope you like her.

http://thehulltruth.net/photos/show-...7&photoid=3630

[auguste]

Wowwwwwww

Caught my first marlin this June (on my boat) while fishing alone . . . small in comparison to your exploits . . . but I am happy . . . sad that I didn't have my camera, but being by myself I would not have been able to take a pic . . .

Again, quite the story . . .

[Bullshipper]

Great, Tony the Tiger Great!!!!

[treedawg]

Very nice

TD

[MI Ben]

Thanks guys

That was the first time I ever finished a fight and gasped "I don't need to catch anything bigger than that!"

[445 supermag]

Sweet doesn't do that picture justice. That is just beautiful, and that really doesn't do it justice either.

That picture should be on your desktop on you home computer.

Truly remarkeable.

My mouth just dropped when I saw that. Wow congrats on a beautiful fish.

Brian

[MI Ben]

Brian, it IS on my desktop

Thanks much!