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Today was spectacular! The ocean was slick, calm, and burple it was so clear. Under a bright sun we made the trip to Challenger Bank. The plan was to try and tease a marlin to within photo range of the camera from behind the boat. That meant trawling a spread of hookless lures which would raise a fish close enough to the boat for us to see it, then in a matter of seconds, I needed to be kitted up with free-dive gear and camera and jump from the moving boat, right myself, point the camera toward the speeding lures and hope there was something still following behind.
The captain, Matt Mauldwin, mates Courtney Stanley and Rustan Rood were incredible. First calling the fish before I could see it as it swam up and then guiding the lines over my head once I was in the water. The first raised fish happened so fast. No sooner had I cleared the cloud of cavitation than there it was heading straight for me. I'm not sure who got a bigger fright, me or the white marlin. On reviewing the footage we found that there had been two whites, one on the short rigger, the other on the long. As I approached the fish it was in full feed prey response mode attacking the lure, in an instant it made a 90 degree turn and in a split second dulled its stripes, turning a very pale white. It raised its dorsal a time or two and then retracted it into the recess on its back while hightailing it back to the lures now a hundred yards away.
This behavior was pretty standard for all the fish we raised, four whites and a blue who disappeared before I got to him. All in all a great day on the water with more to follow tomorrow.
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