Marlin Fishing and Baby Food

Have you ever had a small baby that doesn’t want to eat?   What do you do?   …keep reading the marlin fishing relation is coming I promise. Anyway, my wife always went with the procedure of putting the food in the spoon, then flying it around and making airplane noises until it went into the child’s mouth.  It seemed to work most the time.  Like anything else in my life, I immediately saw how this related to marlin fishing. So I proceeded to explain the utterly obvious relation to my wife, and after that she preferred I stay away from the baby.  So sad.  Now the kids are grown so we just yell when they won’t eat.  Again, I can relate that to marlin fishing as well, but that’s for an entirely different article. So, what I have noticed over the many years marlin fishing is that most marlin will come up and bat the marlin lure with their bill.  I have seen marlin do this for a couple minutes straight just to leave when they realize the piece of plastic simply does not die and miraculously continues to swim at a steady 8 knots. So how can we stop these fish from leaving.  It is simple – we have to entice them like a baby spoon masked as a tiny little airplane, but we entice them to eat the lure. But how? Ultimately the Marlin is trying to kill (or at least slow down) the baitfish then eat it, right?  So, its simple, make the marlin think he did his job.  The best way I have found to do this is to simply grab the line (and please note this is dangerous if not done right).  So you grab the line and bring in at least a yard or two with caution and safely, right at the time the marlin makes his bill smak  ….. drop it back 2 yards into the marlins mouth.  In essence, you are just giving a second or two for the lure to stop so the marlin thinks he has won and then proceeds to eat it. As a side note, and to this day, I still like to make the little baby airplane noises right as I drop back the lure.  I highly recommend that small addition to the drop back.  The other guys on the boat will in all likelyhood laugh, tease and make fun of you – but you will be the one handing over the rod with a big marlin hooked on the line!!   Tight Lines Amigos