As I'm a Pom, it might seem strange for some of you guys and girls to be reading this. But, if you've been struggling with your blue marlin catches, have a read of the following !

I may not live by the warm blue ocean and I may not even be down at your end of the world, but I have caught a few of the big old blue girls and for what it's worth, this first bit that I'm writing for Sportsfish Australia will simply outline the stage I'm at in my 'technical' beliefs !

If some of it helps you out, then great. What follows is a brief synopsis of how I fish at present. It's not set in stone, and it's most certainly not intended as a set of rules !!

'Simple' is a great word. And when it comes to blue marlin, it's the best word there is. Now, I'll say this right off the bat - I cause aggro wherever I go and whatever I write. Not because I may be right or wrong, but simply because my beliefs differ vastly from many people when it comes to lures and blue marlin. There are some guys in my opinion (which may be wrong, of course !) who make the whole deal out to be a real rocket science, both in the lure stakes, the technical details and the tactics used, but - in essence - it all boils down to a succession of points.

One, you have to go to sea in a reasonably capable boat. Two, you have to have tackle up to scratch, including reel, rod, line, terminal stuff and lures. Three, you have to find a fish and run the damn thing over. Four, you then have to hook it if it swings at something you've put out the back. Five, you then have to catch it. Get any one of those points wrong and you're back to the end of the queue. Let's start at the beginning.

THE BOAT - you guys in Australia have it made ! You live in boating heaven. Loads of good boats, lots of sea and pretty good access everywhere from what I hear ! Boy, I envy you. Anyway, a boat capable of blue marlin fishing has to have a variety of qualities. It has to be seaworthy, nimble, safe, sea-kindly (yes - there is a difference between this and 'seaworthy'), economical if possible, fast if you have distance to travel, and - how can I put this - it has to raise fish (shock horror amongst those of you who feel the boat is not that important for this purpose).

The pointy end goes much faster

Now, the latter point is almost the most important for serious fishos since we all know that if you took to the water wearing your latest Billabong togs and pulling a lumo Sprocket off your starboard flipper that you most probably wouldn't raise that many fish (not the sort you want anyway - you could well raise the completely wrong sort of fish in which case you're well and truly pickled !). The guy next to you in the 6m trailer-boat with the center-cab and the big Honda on the back almost certainly would raise more than you doing the backstroke, but then again, he wouldn't really fancy his chances against the latest offering from Assegai Marine.

It all boils down to one thing - some boats raise fish, and some don't. So, RULE ONE - make sure you fish a boat that raises fish. For me that means a mono-hull, twin-diesel, with a flybridge. Yes, it can also be a single-engined boat with no bridge…….if you insist ! You guys know your seas better than me but a good length would have to be somewhere between 30 and 50 feet. And yes, I haven't forgotten that the vast majority of you guys down that way fish out of trailer-boats with a single outboard - you'll raise fish too, as long as you don't look for them to close to the transom. Run the lures a little longer !!!!

TACKLE - okay, here we go with BUGBEAR no 1. Where you people fish you're looking at blue marlin which can weigh anywhere from 200 lbs upwards. You're not in the Caribbean where you can expect a succession of rats, nor are you in Madeira where one fish in ten is a grander, BUT, you may be in with a shout of a 600lb fish most days.

In my view, this warrants the use of heavy tackle. 80lb minimum, 130 the norm. I simply wouldn't fish for fish this size without this sort of tackle if I did not have too. My aim is to catch the fish, not re-rig and re-spool all day long, followed by a sorrowful, drunken wake all night. I want to catch the fish, do it quickly and cleanly, put it back and get back on the troll while the bite is still on. No half-arsing around with a butt-pad and light gear, no bent 50lb gear for five hours on a dead fish - just a job done properly so all enjoy it and there are no recriminations. That's just me.

Reels taped and marked

My favourite set-up for blues involves a lever-drag reel (select any from Shimano, Penn, Accurate, Duel et al), a bent-butt rod with serious poke at the lower end and some recovery at the tip made out of a glass mix, a bit of fluorescent IGFA-rated Moimoi mainline, some orange Courtland dacron underneath the mono, my wind-ons made from 650 Extra-Hard Moimoi, a pair of 7732 stainless Mustads, and a lure that stays put all day long and is a proven fish catcher. We'll have to go through all the points one by one.

Reels - almost any of the better quality reels on the market today will catch you a grander fish. If you gave me the cheque-book for your boat, I'd happily buy any of the brands already mentioned. They all have good qualities, and they all have some bad ones too. If push came to shove, I'd probably buy the 130 Tiagras from Shimano. They've ironed out most of the teething problems now and the drags and shift mechanism are second to none. However, Penn longetivity is legendary, Duel's work great and have great access, and Accurates seem built to last.

Rods - any rod from a manufacturer who knows what he is doing and has the qualities I mentioned above would suit me. I would want Aftco Big Foot guides on my rods, a 130 bent butt and winch fitting and a decent foregrip made out of something grippy.

Continued...

Line - I fill my reels with about 4/5 of dacron, normally orange Courtland, and top with hi-vis Moimoi. I join the two lines together with back-to-back biminis (and no, there's no dacron sleeve involved on the mono-loop). This system has served me well on hundreds of big blue marlin and I haven't broken this particular connection yet. It's a quick and easy join, always visible, and is easily 're-do-able' at sea. If it's good enough for many top boats it's good enough for me.

Splices break, chafe, are time-consuming and you can't see what what's happening inside that length of splice. Yes , they may be neat and earn plaudits from bosses and captains, but in the real world of underwater battle the fish is not paddling along admiring your connections, believe me ! At the end of my line I'll tie a 10' double with a bimini. Personally, I use biminis because I can tie them quick and strong, but you guys down there are welcome to your plaits ! I use a double purely for the 100% strength join it gives me to my terminal tackle, not because I want my angler putting it on his reel and then pulling for all he's worth !!

Nice big-eye tuna are often a by-catch in north east Atlantic waters

Terminal tackle - at present I use my own wind-ons. I make these from 23' of 650 extra-hard Moimoi, spliced into a four foot section of 200lb Murray Bros black dacron. The splice is made using the reverse inside-out loop, and the end is taped (not whipped) with a one inch section of red 3M tape. This serves both as a highly visible marker for the crew and also as a reminder…….when the tape comes loose it's time to change the wind-on, trust me !

The dacron is spotted with superglue every 10" or so to stop it 'floating off' during a long run by a fish. The end of the wind-on is crimped to a 600lb Sampo swivel with chafe gear and a bead to stop the crimp riding into the tip-eye.

5 feet of the same leader with a lure on it is then crimped at one end to the Sampo and at the other to a hook-set made from 7732's (BUGBEAR number 2). I use these for various reasons, the most important being I care for my fish. If I leave a hook or hookset in their mouths at release time I do not want them swimming around with some nasty galvanized or other coating-plated hook rusting VERY slowly in their mouths, leaching nasties into their stomach or all over their gills.

I'll be the first to admit that we shouldn't be leaving hooks in fishes' mouths, but when we do - I believe it should be a stainless, clean one. Hooks fall out of their own accord LONG before they rust out - if they're going to. If they stay in that long they are going to poison the fish so badly it will die anyway. You can be sure that if you stick a galvanized hook in your hand you'll end up at the doctor at some stage. Fish can't do that, so I try to keep it clean. Stainless they can wear for ever - it will just be an inconvenience.

On the subject of hooks, I also believe that a 7732 will always hook a big fish better than a 7691 when lure fishing. I want my fish to be hooked on the bite, and a 10/0 7732 has more gape than a 12/0 7691 with which to do so. A 7732 is also going to do several more things better than a 7691 - you'll hook more fish in the bill and hard parts like that and you'll also hook more fish on those occasions where the point is facing you when everything comes tight (and since that happens an awful lot on my short baits, for example, it might explain why I catch a few fish) .

Arguments will rage for decades about the hooks we use, and will continue to do so until we actually get a live fish one day and tie him to a chair under a bright light and find out some answers from the fishes' point of view. Until then I'll use whatever is it I'm using, and you can use yours !!

Lures - hmm……….how much space do I have here Neil ? Okay, I have not been fishing that long compared to a lot of other people, but I'm not a great one for following the herd and I like to believe that I think about my fishing.

To that end, I've arrived at the genius conclusion that I enjoy catching fish far more than watching them knock 7-bells of s**t out of a lure and then swim away. So, nowadays I put out lures that I know swim well, all day, and also manage to snag more than the odd fish instead of just getting as bite out of them. These lures do not tumble or jump, but they're not lazy either.

They work all day, require minimal adjustment, smoke hugely, splash at the appropriate moment, and they will all get down and boogie at some stage or another. There are various lures out there that do this well, and it is no surprise that many of those that do so are straight runners with flat noses, often with cupped faces. However, personally, I find that this sort of lure is slightly boring in its repetitiveness, so I lean more towards angled heads that do the same thing but also have slightly more variety in swimming pattern.

Does this make sense ? The secret is to find those lures that you watch all day long but you never see the bite……….

Continued...

BUGBEAR no 3 - I do not use taglines for big blue marlin. I fish my four lures (all of them) out of the rigger. This gives me room to make my lures work how I want them to, and it gives me the drop-back I consider essential for big blue marlin. I say four lures because I don't use a shotgun when chasing these fish. Whether the rods are all in the covering board or you have two in the chair is up to you. Marlin are big fish, at the peak of their world, and when they bite a lure they do not spit it out in a nano-second.

The rewards of heavy tackle

When people talk of a marlin dropping a lure, it's normally the result of two things - either the marlin opened his mouth finally and the thing dropped out with no hook-up, or the line came tight at the wrong moment (normally too soon - ie: BEFORE they got it into their mouths properly) and pulled the lure away from the fish. Think about it, if a marlin finally grabs hold of something it's been chasing or attacking for a while, the last thing it's going to do is open its mouth straightaway so the damn thing can escape, is it ?

Hopefully the fish will pop it out of the clip, turn away and by the time everything comes tight the hook-point should be facing in a different direction to that in which the fish is travelling. I do not want a fish to eat a lure and then have the damn thing jerked away from it as it's still coming in the same direction as the hook-point. It simply does not make sense to me, and if any of you have ever had the luck to see any underwater footage of big blues attacking lure you should hopefully understand why I believe in what I do.

Incidentally, this way I also catch an awful lot of bill-hooked AND bill-wrapped fish. That's the 7732's for you ! To put my lures up in the pins I use Aftco Roller-Trollers and a Power-gum loop. Power-gum is an elastic line which is tied in a nine -inch length to the main -line by two nine-turn uni-knots, These are then pushed together to make the loop.

The loop then goes in the Roller-Troller which is set at sufficient strength to keep the point of a hook lodged in something just long enough until everything comes tight properly and the reel and drag get to work sinking it home 'gently'. I personally do not like dacron loops. They're time-consuming to make and set in place, can slip in the turn (great if that's the moment a fish decides to pile on), and offer a large profile in the water. They are also a bind to replace at sea on a broken line or if a loop breaks in the first place. I have seen several fish lost due to dacron-loop failure.

BUGBEAR no 4 - I'm not a great fan of teasers for blue marlin, particularly big teasers such as Mouldcraft Fenders, and Witchdoctors, even though they are effective and some people swear by them. I think these things are difficult (if not impossible) to take away from an excited and hungry fish and the less stuff I have out the back of the boat the quicker we can go a-catching after a hook-up. I'd rather use the boat as a teaser and then have the fish eat the lures.

Very traditional, I know, but what the hell - it works for me and I don't have that many sorry tales to tell at the end of the day. In any event, I certainly would not use multiple teasers of any denomination for blues ! They might be fine for whites and stripies but you're asking for trouble when chasing big fish. If I do use single teasers they are always on electric reels operated from the bridge and they are normally outsize marlin lures of the type that I do not put hooks in since the hook-up ratio on them is so poor (ie: they don't get eaten properly enough most of the time which means the whole arrangement isn't a potentially dubious proposition).

This way I have a good chance of not only seeing the fish attempting to eat the thing, but I also have a great chance of managing to take the teaser away from the fish before the rigger gets broken !! Again, I must emphasis that this is simply what I do. Many people do things differently and have just as much fun !

Drags are a much discussed subject throughout the angling world, and many people think of Australia and New Zealand as the lands of the Sunset Drag. Whilst this may well be typical of your pursuit of 'fin, big toothy things and blacks, I personally do not ascribe to this theory when chasing blues on lures. I use a strike drag of around 17 lbs on both my 130's and 80's when using lures (they're still the same hooks normally), and manage to keep my drag at that while catching around 75% of my fish - yes, even the big ones.

However, there is a Caveat here - I do not specifically fish for blue marlin records, I do not fish in tournaments, I do not intend to kill any marlin (the one exception is the fish for which even ardent conservationists may well make an exception for !) and I use 7732's. Since these are my pursuits, I get away with a light drag, lots of black smoke, frantic winding and happy fish released quickly. There is more to this than that I guess, but the point is simple. You cannot lead a big blue marlin to the boat in the first few minutes of the fight, so if your aim is to catch a fish quickly you have to take the boat to it.

There are many people who frown upon excessive use of the boat (and indeed, I abhor guys who use reverse as indiscriminately as spoilt child opening Christmas presents when the pointy end of the boat is the bit that's designed to go quickly through the water) but to me the name of the game is fishing, and the end game is catching. If you are fortunate enough to have a guy at the wheel who can use the boat to its utmost, I would take every advantage of it. Get the fish, wire it, tag it, then if the fish gets away put the drag right up if that's your game. To not use all of the advantages at your disposal to win a battle with a big, once-in-a-lifetime fish is stupid when not only the outcome of the battle, but also the fish's life could well depend on your use of those aids.

Anyone whose idea of piscatorial heaven is to be slumped over a hugely bent rod for hours under a hot sun so they can feel the pain later at the bar and brag about it is beyond help - in my opinion.

Continued...

If all of this sounds confused, think of it like this. Picture two people in a field, each joined by 100' of rope to one of two donkeys. They're to have a race and the winner is the first to touch his respective donkey. One person decides to pull the donkey to them, all muscles and red face, whilst the other trots after his donkey, trying not to startle it too much and gathering in the slack as he goes. Which one of those guys is likely to touch his animal first ?

This is gonna hurt for hours and hours - 50 lb line HARD at work !

If my anglers moan about not having fun, I simply tell them to go up on the drag, and after ten minutes or so of heaving away at a fish that has turned vicious and nasty they normally listen the next time round. There is fun to be had in getting stuck into a fish, and yes, I agree that the rod should bend and line should come off the reel, and yes - sometimes it is the only way to win the battle. But, do this too often unnecessarily with a blue on heavy gear and one day it will ultimately turn against you and the fish will go down and do silly things in cold water down deep.

If you want to catch a big blue marlin, and have the opportunity to dictate matters, I suggest you take the 'softly softly' route - you will catch far more fish than you would with heavy drags. Besides (and here's the prime reason for the light drag setting) you also stay attached to a lot more fish ! Other people's typical 45 lbs of strike drag does wonders to a fish's mouth when lure fishing, particularly at the end of a double-banded tag-line ! The bottom line for me is simply that it is more fun to have caught a fish than it is to have lost one after much hard work !

Of course, people always ask more about my drags, and I tell them that generally I have a fight drag of about 25 lbs or so on the button, something just the other side of it which is normally about 32 lbs or so, and then I'll find a point where the pull's around 38 - 40 lbs. I mark all of these on tape and I also mark whatever the reel does in 'park'. This does vary from reel to reel, and make to make, but for a Penn 130 measured and marked as described above, your 'park' will be somewhere between 50 and 65 lbs.

Even then this will not be enough to stop a dead fish sinking and you'll have to put your hands deep into the reel to help yourself out in such a situation. If that doesn't work then it's free-spool time while you rack up the pre-set a few clicks and then go back to sunset with the lever !!

Incidentally, the one reel setting I haven't mentioned so far is almost the most important one - it's the point on the drag where you can pull line off the reel freely without it overrunning . This is what I call the 'emergency' drag, even though it's not normally panic stations when we use it, which is about once every fish. This is the setting we go to when the cockpit is clear, the angler's buttoned up with a fish going away and I start to turn the boat so the pointy end is heading for the fish.

As the stern kicks out to go around, you can easily double the drag at the reel if it's really creaming off and so for those few moments during the manoeuvre (which can be exacerbated by swell and a pitching boat), my crew always tell the angler to go down on to that setting. Of course, it is known as the 'emergency' setting for a good reason too - this is the also the mark which an angler must go too if the fish has more than 200 yards of line out and/or is motoring off faster than a torpedo !

ouch, this is gonna hurt for hours

A big blue can run so fast, so far, and change direction so many times in the first few blistering minutes of an encounter that many, many fish are bust off at this stage, particularly by inexperienced crews. Remember the golden rule - if you're losing line so fast that you're in danger of being spooled, BACK THE DRAG OFF.

Obviously you don't stand still after you've done this and file your nails, since you'll still be losing the line of course - all you've done is alleviate the possibility of pulled hooks or broken string. What you have to do is turn and chase the line and that little rooster-tail as calmly as you can. Don't overrun it, just keep it there alongside the boat so you can turn away from it if needs be. Watch the spool, and go fast enough with the boat until the spool stops turning.

When it does, go back up to strike drag, and start winding. Keep winding for all you're worth, and the skipper should keep the boat pointed in the direction that ENSURES LINE STILL COMES ONTO THE REEL, even if you see the fish going ballistic elsewhere. Keep doing this, all the way up to the rigger mark before you turn the boat and go stern-first into the fish (unless you are aware the fish is close and the wrong side of the boat !! In which case take emergency remedial action !). Common sense will win the day every time with a big blue, as will calmness, steady boat sense, patience and keen eyes.

Anyway, amongst all the drivel you've read so far I have probably covered most points I mentioned earlier and hopefully given you some things to ponder over. The deep-thinkers amongst you will assume there is much more to catching blue marlin than this, but there isn't really - not on lures anyway.

Yes, there is experience which can help out over the long run, decisions made easy by repetitive scenarios, but in essence a big blue is relatively easy to catch if you follow a few guidelines and keep it simple and stay calm when your spool is half empty ! Of course, to go back to lures (which generates the most bar-talk), it does help to have lures back there which do raise fish, do hook them up and do hold on to them.

A lot of lures do one or maybe two of those things, but if you can garner together a collection of lures that do all three on a regular basis then you're halfway through the battle.

Just my thoughts ………..hope they help when that reel screams ! Any arguments or questions, drop me a line on info@legendlures.com please !