Fishing isn’t for everyone, I know that. But I grew up on an island down in the Gulf Coast of Florida and spent 3 to 5 days a week throughout my entire childhood fishing, the salt water runs through my veins. This footage shot from the flybridge of a boat shows two marlin stalking the teasers (I’ll explain that in a second if you don’t know what those are), and then crashing the bait after they crew’s swapped the teaser out. Then the hooked marlin goes nuts, as marlin do when they find themselves hooked. I think perhaps the most remarkable thing about this video is the proximity of the two massive marlin to the boat when the one on the left takes the bait (the other marlin is in the top left of the video. So if you love fishing, get ready to have your mind blown:
So for those of you that aren’t familiar with teasers, here’s a really short and simple definition of those: the teaser has no hooks, it’s just a plastic rig you put out behind the boat that’s designed to look like a school of swimming baitfish. That simulated school of baitfish draws up the big fish from the deep, in this case marlin, and once you spot that marlin/sailfish/whatever behind the boat you pull the teasers out of the water and pitch a bait with a hook out to where that big fish was in hopes that the marlin/sailfish will take the bait, it usually does. This is the ‘bait and switch’ style of fishing, and probably where the term ‘bait and switch’ originated.
If you’ve never been marlin fishing PLAN YOUR TRIP NOW. While it might not be that non-stop all day action you get when fishing for snapper and amberjack, there’s NOTHING like the thrill of a marlin strike, and the sense of accomplishment you get from tagging and releasing a marlin. I’ve only ever caught blue marlin, but black marlin, striped marlin, and white marlin are all on my ‘Marlin Bucket List’. I’m hoping to book a trip next winter (winter 2016-2017) to the Tropic Star Lodge in Panama to knock black marlin off my list, and it’s just been way too long since the last time I was down in Panama (by far my favorite of the Central American countries, and a country where I’ve spent a collective six months or so of my life).
As for that video above, given how close that marlin was when it took the bait it’s a miracle that something like this didn’t end up happening: