Marlin February 2020

That statement came from Viking Yachts president and CEO Pat Healey during a press conference at the 2019 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. There were plenty of raised eyebrows among the 50 or so members of the marine-industry media in attendance. Healey continued: “It is going to rock the industry. They’re mandating impossible regulations that require solutions that don’t exist in today’s world.” The “they” Healey is referring to is an international governing body called the International Maritime Organization, of which the United States is a member. While Viking and other boat-builders are already in compliance with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Tier III requirements for marine diesels, the IMO Tier III NOx regulations aim to reduce nitrogen-oxide emissions by approximately 70 percent compared to the current IMO Tier II…

editor@marlinmag.com LET THE BIG ONES GO I have one message we should all consider: Let more of the big fish go. I strongly believe these big mamas are the most biologically productive. All females not only lay significantly more eggs with size and age, but their eggs may also be more viable, producing hardier larvae, which are able to withstand the rigorous oceanic environment, especially in their earliest life stages where mortality is greatest. Yes, it should remain a personal decision, but recreational fishermen can continue to lead by example in an expanding and hungry world still searching for more protein. John W. Jolley Retired senior fisheries scientist Via email STAY RELEVANT OR ELSE I read Capt. Skip Smith’s article on the canceling of many once-popular billfish tournaments, and it…

SILVER SHOWERS Winter in the Florida Keys means sailfish; one of the most exciting moments occurs when a pod of sails is pushing ballyhoo inside the reef. Photographer Tim Rahn spends weeks on the water in a bay boat each season, chasing ballyhoo showers in search of that perfect image. “The boat is moving, the light is always changing, and the bait moves at lightning speed,” he says, “but I really love the challenge of it all.” LOCATION Rahn snapped this image off Islamorada in the Florida Keys. TECH SPECS CAMERA: Canon EOS-1DX LENS: Canon EF 300mm IS USM ISO: 200 APERTURE: f/2.8 SPEED: 1/1328 sec…

One of the many successful captains to emerge from Cairns, Australia’s heavy-tackle black marlin fishery is Corey Hard, who runs the Aussie-built Assegai 55, Askari. Hard began his fishing career working on a long-line vessel out of Cairns in his early 20s until he saved enough to buy a 21-foot, single-screw mackerel boat. Fishing commercially on the Great Barrier Reef taught him a number of invaluable lessons, such as learning how the entire reef system worked and where to find bait when it became scarce. Once he made the transition to charter captain, the black marlin grounds were already second nature to him.…

How was last year’s black marlin fishing out of Cairns? We have been the top boat for the past five heavy-tackle seasons, but 2018 was our best ever. We caught 144 black marlin, many of which were large fish—way over 400 pounds. But it’s also interesting to look back at some of the big numbers of marlin that were caught back in the heyday of the Great Barrier Reef in the 1970s and 1980s: Capt. Peter Bristow caught 192 blacks in 1973 and 160 in 1974 on Avalon; no one else has ever come close to those numbers. You grew up in Sydney. What made you head to Cairns? I left Sydney when I was 24 for a better life in the tropics. As a kid, I spent 10 years…

BITE TRACKER Stay current with the best bites from the top billfish destinations around the globe at marlinmag.com/travel.…