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william · 2014-01-23T14:31:22Z

The story below is one of the most well written accounts of a crew catching a behemoth sized marlin.In this story a Penn 16/0 is put to the test and the writer is well aware of the reels strengths ,and it's weaknesses,and how fishing line being dragged thru water increases drag pressure and can spell line breakage to the unfamiliar and unwise angler.Read this story there is much BIG GAME ANGLING WISDOM in it if you know where to look. ANGLING'S UNSUNG HERO PART II THE CATCH Lou could see that the rest of the crew except John was overawed by the size and energy of this matchless black marlin. They were a seasoned crew of local friends who had been marlin fishing several times but they had all frozen at the moment of truth and that bothered Lou. Well, it was a huge marlin and except for John no one else was weathered at fighting or landing really big marlin like this one looked to be. This was a substantial black marlin in the prime of life, the kind of marlin that would be feeding off New Zealand one day and swimming the Gulf of Panama a few months later. She swam the Oceans of the World searching for optimal forage and habitat circumstances much like a large predatory fish in a small Lake. Surprisingly not aboard that particular day was Theodore Schmidt, it being his wife's birthday he would be sorely missed. But still something had to be done to promote the crew's confidence since they would all be needed to get this dirty great giant marlin in the boat. PANAMA BLACK MARLIN- Marlin fishing The spirited whopper black marlin was taking out too much line at once even though by now it had changed course several times. Lou knew that if enough line were towed through the water by such a fast ambitious billfish the resulting extreme drag force would cause a break off. For this reason the Schmidt's ran reasonably light drags on the big reels and had a square piece of leather sewn on the reels so as to apply thumb pressure to ably increase resistance on the spool when needed during a tough battle with a gargantuan long running billfish. Lou tried to remember if any other giant marlin had ever done so much in so little time, then he wondered if there was something wrong with the drag of the reel. Well it was a pretty big marlin so it was natural she cause quite a commotion when first hooked up. But this outrageously energetic animal was making a lot of extra distance and taking too much line! Over millions of years marlin have evolved the perfect hydrodynamic fusiform shape, which offers the least resistance in their aquatic environment. They are composed mostly of muscle devoted to fast swimming with a specific density that is only a hair over that of its surroundings (saltwater). Through the use of its swim bladder it is in fact weightless in the water and just one flick of its powerful tail will move it quite a distance at great speed. Marlins are the fastest fish in the oceans, their attainable speed increases concurrently with larger size. The biggest marlins are female and not accustomed to bearing or carrying any weight or feeling the least resistance in their natural habitat, the ocean. When hooked up to a rod and reel she feels a great opposing counterinfluence confining her, she instinctively panics, turns tail and stampedes until spent. That is if the angler has mastered his craft and throughout the battle skillfully and mercilessly applies constant pressure never allowing the fish to rest. This is a giant marlin's Achilles' Heel and how to catch them on rod and reel. The phenomenal black marlin made her first astounding greyhounding run of about 600 yards in less than 30 seconds which translates into more than 1/3 mile at speeds exceeding 60 miles an hour! This speed and distance had been achieved mostly through saltwater that is 800 times denser than air, dragging 30 pounds of dead weight, which increased steadily to about 75 pounds courtesy of the 16/0 Penn Senator drag and quantity of wetted line towed behind her. The potently outsized billfish instinctively changed direction repeatedly, dynamically jumping and forcefully crashing though the waves as she sought to free herself. It all happened so fast no one could tell how many times the giant dynamo marlin jumped, just that she was still breaking water and leaving a trail of mortar-like explosions as she raced away. Her first airborne contortion had been breath-taking as the irresistible leviathan had cleared the water completely, vividly manifesting her heavyweight elephantine magnitude in living neon blue/black, silver and gold colors, as if to terrorize. Her other highballing hurdles had served mostly to panic the crew and heat up the big reel to the point that ice water was poured on it at intervals to keep it from melting or seizing. panama black marlin panicked Now that the lines were cleared everyone's strained attention focused on the quantity of line missing from the reel and the appreciable distance that must be reduced by the Caiman II bus...

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william

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