The Beach Haven White Marlin Invitational Tournament held its event this past Thursday through Saturday.  June Bug fished the Matt Garabedian party.  Matt and his group fished this Tournament with June Bug last year as well and we won the Heaviest Wahoo prize.

This year, the weather was superb but chances had to be taken to catch fish.  While Bluefin Tuna fishing has been outstanding, with many fish in teh 150 to 200 pound range being taken, the tuna chunking for the Bluefins started about a week ago and that usually shuts off catching them on the troll. 

Many boats went south to the Bluefin grounds and did have success although they all reported heavy traffic from both trollers and chunkers.  Many large Bluefins were caught by Beach Haven Tournament boats.  Many Tournament boats went south and caught nothing as well.

June Bug decided that Bluefin fishing would be chancy and we found charts that showed strong currents sweeping across Toms Canyon so that where we headed on Thursday.  We found lots of dense fog at the Toms early Thursday morning around daybreak.  We did not find pods of bait there but there were layers of light green water that looked as if it had algae in it.  There were upwellings but we were surprised that there were no fish in those upwelling areas.

We did raise one White Marlin in late morning and caught a 60 pound Yellowfin right after noon.  We caught a second Yellowfin, a twin of the first, a couple of hours and several miles away.  Several other Tournament boats caught smaller Yellowfin at the Toms as well and one boat hooked two Blue Marlin.  They lost one at the transom and did release the other.

Saturday the current chart looked best for the Lindenkohl so that's where June Bug went.  No fog and no bait here either.  We worked the edge over pretty well once fishing time came and then worked our way out to 500 fathoms where we found some upwelling evidence along with pilot whales and porpoise.  We caught several small Mahi and then hooked a nice White Marling only to lose it at the boat when the hooked pulled.

We had one tuna strike all day.

The Stop Fishing time in this Tournament is 3 p.m. and we dutifully stopped fishing then and were pulling the lines in.  The last line popped out of the rigger clip, a naked ballyhoo bait, and a huge Blue Marlin hooked off and then took off jumping and pulling off line until fewer than 20 wraps were left on the reel.  We chased the fish and recovered line.  Every time the boat would get close to the fish, the fish would tail walk and greyhound away again.  This went on for almost 2-1/2 hours.  At the 2 hour mark, we had the angler put more drup on the fish and changed tactics.  We really pressured the fish and got it to the boat.  Capt. Nathan Figley, our mate, just touched the leader and the leader broke at the hook.

What a fish.  Even though it didn't count for the Tournament, it wsa a fantastic fight.  The fish went at least 550 pounds and likely much more.

We wrapped up at 5:45 and headed for home.  All in all, a great time.

Capt. Lindsay Fuller

Cell 609-685-2839