Five of the Best Blue Marlin Spots

Capt. Peter Wright shares his favorite spots for Atlantic Blues
Cape Verde Islands

Local legend has it that when God finished making the Sahara Desert, he wiped his hands together and the sand and small bits of rock that fell into the ocean became the islands of Cape Verde, just offshore of Africa's west coast.

One of the main reasons it makes my list is that I've had more blue marlin bites in a single day here than anywhere else I've ever fished. While fishing on Duyfken in 1997 with my sole angler, John Phillips, we lost count of the number of blues we raised. We estimated that between 35 and 50 different blue marlin struck our lures that day!

A few weeks later with Dr. Jim Huddlestun on board, we hooked, fought and lost the largest blue marlin anyone in my crew had ever seen. I called Hooker 15 minutes into the fight and told Capt. Trevor Cockle the fish was still tailing down-sea and showed no signs of being hooked - even with 30 pounds of drag on her back. When the line broke unexpectedly, my wireman, a tough young Carolinian, sat down as tears filled his eyes.

"Don't worry about it," said Dr. Huddlestun, "It was just a fish."

"No it wasn't," was my mate's reply, "I may never see another one like that again!"

So far, none of us has.

Before anyone I knew, or had even heard of, ever fished the Cape Verde Islands, Skip Smith, Barky Garnsey and I looked at charts of the islands and wondered what we might find there. We were already catching large numbers of big blue marlin off the Ivory Coast of Africa and knew about the good fishing in the Azores and the Canaries. Since the Cape Verde Islands lay along the line of the East Atlantic Ridge, right between the Canary Islands and the Ivory Coast, it seemed likely that the fishing would be good.

"I saw the first blue before I could even clear in," says Smith about his first trip to the islands. "A blue tailed past us while we waited for customs at the capital of Praia, down on Sao Tiago. Then we got 17 bites in one day at Sal and lost a grander on 50-pound when our angler got a little impatient. I couldn't leave after that."

This kind of action happens almost every year in Cape Verde, but no one can guess weeks or months ahead of time when exactly that hot bite's going to occur.

Cape Verde

Season - March-August

Charter Operators:

Capt. Zak Conde - Beast'N zak.conde@marlincapeverde.com or zakconde@hotmail.com
(He recommends e-mailing him twice, on different days, due to frequent
problems with e-mail.)
www.marlincapeverde.comBahama Islands

The Bahama Islands, originally a colony of England, are now an independent country and a member of the British Commonwealth. The Bahamas sprawl across thousands of square miles of Atlantic Ocean. Two major banks, each holding numerous islands, fall off into deep blue ocean water, with strong currents carrying large numbers of pelagic species.

Bimini, the closest island in the Bahamas to the U.S. mainland, lies less than 50 miles from Miami and represents one of the true cradles of sport fishing. Charter captains from Miami's Pier 5 crossed the Gulf Stream and invented the necessary tackle and techniques of trolling dead natural bait for big-game fish. Their marlin and tuna captures along the eastern edge of the Gulf Stream became the stuff of legends. Capt. Tommy Gifford's catches of a 300-pound blue marlin on what is now called 20-pound-test line and a 500-pound tuna on 50-pound-test set world records that stood for decades.

Capt. Sam Crutchfield, whose CDs of billfishing ballads are ubiquitous on board the huge fleet of boats that fishes the Bahamas Billfish Championship series of tournaments, plied the waters off Walker's Cay and the Abaco chain long before tournaments became commonplace. "The deep water off the eastern Bahamas holds the biggest blue marlin," says Crutchfield. "On any given day, a real big one could show up. Granders have been caught in the Abacos, but a lot more are lost due to poor tackle and inexperience."

"Spring and early summer is when all the tournaments take place, but blue marlin are caught off Walker's every month of the year," Crutchfield says. "And they get thick in the pocket off Chub Cay from January through April if the wind blows southeast."

Ever since commercial overfishing caused the collapse of Bimini's and Cat Cay's spectacular giant bluefin tuna fishery, the fishing emphasis moved to the eastern outer islands. While a 500-pound marlin will usually make money in one of the Bahamas Billfish Championship series of tournaments, the large fleet encounters an occasional marlin exceeding 1,000 pounds.

With friendly natives, a stable government and easy access from the United States, the Bahamas hosts thousands of eager marlin fishermen every year.Bahamas

Season - May-July

Charter Operators:

Abacos/Marsh Harbor
Capt. Marvin Steiding - Reel Candy
941-928-8888
www.reelcandyfishing.com

Bimini
Capt. Jerome Stuart - Miss Bonita
242-347-2081
www.biminifishing.comVirgin Islands

In 1960, on my first visit to St. Thomas, I spent the summer between my junior and senior year in high school crewing on a boat and cruising the British Virgin Islands. The hordes of blue marlin that forage along the now-famous North Drop had not yet been discovered. With Capt. Steve Smith on Chantyman, I helped tourists catch small game and one day helped Capt. Johnny Harms on board Bob Maytag's Bimini Babe change a bent shaft. I don't think anybody caught a blue marlin there that summer.

But in the early 1960s, both Tommy Gifford and Harms moved to St. Thomas. Harms' and Gifford's blue marlin catches soon made the island of St. Thomas world famous as a blue marlin mecca. When John Battles caught his world-record 814-pound blue marlin in 1964, the rush of anglers to St. Thomas began in earnest. Soon, catches of five blues in a single day became unexceptional.

In the early 1980s, Larry Martin caught a 1,282-pound blue on Xiphias with Jimmy Unrath while running the boat on a "crew day." With no charter and the boss out of town, the captain, Bark Garnsey, had taken the day off!

On another crew/fun day, less than a week later, with Garnsey at the helm this time, the crew hooked and lost another fish that Martin says was bigger than his record. Garnsey, who has caught numerous granders in Australia and Madeira, says the fish was more than the magic 1,000-pound mark.

St. Thomas also hosts the prestigious U.S.V.I. Open/Atlantic Blue Marlin Tournament, most widely known as The Boy Scout. This prestigious competition began in an effort to raise funds for the local Boy Scout troop more than 36 years ago. Over time the event evolved into an all-release tournament using 50-pound-test line. The lone exception to the all-release rule is that if the crew takes a world-record fish, it can be boated and counted toward their total score. This is one of the very few billfish tournaments in the world where skill rather than luck determines the winner.

"Some of the best, most legendary captains in the world have fished here," says Boy Scout tournament director Jimmy Loveland. "O.B. O'Brien, Bark Garnsey, Skip Smith, Ronnie Hamlin; there's a long list of guys. Most of them still come here. And don't forget that Maudi Lopez's 1,073 is still the women's all-tackle record."

St. Thomas

Seasons - Conventional wisdom says the weeks before and after each full moon of June, July, August and September, but I've caught them just as well on the dark of the moon.

Charter Operators:

Capt. Red Bailey - Abigail III
Home 340-775-6147; cell 340-775-6024
www.visportfish.com

Capt. Eddie Morrison - Marlin Prince 340-693-5929
www.marlinprince.comCanary Islands

As with the Cape Verde Islands, few Americans know much about the Canaries. People are amazed to discover that the Canary Islands host roughly twice as many tourists as the Hawaiian Islands. And since the Canaries sit just a short four-hour flight away from most of Europe, they rapidly became Europe's sunshine and water playground.

The Canaries consist of seven major islands, one minor island and several small islets, all formed from the volcanic activity of the Canary Hotspot. This Spanish Autonomous Community represents the only part of Spain hosting active volcanic eruptions during modern times.

Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Tenerife all host international airports, and inter-island flights also support La Gomera, El Hierro and La Palma. The old harbors on the islands are rapidly being replaced by modern marinas with all the amenities from floating docks to restaurants to marine stores.

While tourism supplanted agriculture and commercial fishing in economic importance, one regrettable conflict still exists between commercial fishing and recreational sport fishing. Spanish commercial fishermen are notorious for ignoring quotas and international agreements; in their home waters, they have the legal right to push sport-fishing anglers off schools of tuna. Be that as it may, on any given weekend from late spring through early fall, you'll probably find a sport-fishing tournament somewhere in the island chain. American anglers recently discovered the islands, and production and custom boats shipped over from the United States are available for charter in most ports.

Along with a number of marlin world records, several marlin exceeding 1,000 pounds have been caught in the Canaries. However, a receipt from a fish buyer showed a payout for a 2,000-pound-plus marlin to a commercial fisherman. Although no pictures of the fish exist, it's doubtful a fish buyer would pay for more than the actual weight of the fish.

Stewart Campbell, holder of many marlin records, who's fished all of my favorite spots and then some, commented that, "Satellite tags have showed that the biggest blue marlin tagged in the higher latitudes - the Azores and Madeira - pass through the Canaries and on to the Cape Verde Islands before splitting off toward the east or heading west to the Gulf of Guinea."

The hardest part about fishing in the Canaries is deciding which island in the nearly 300-mile-long chain you should be fishing that week. Again, fish have big tails and can cover a lot of ground!

Canary Islands

Season - May-September

Charter Operators:

Capt. Jason Pipe - Boci Negro
011-34-629-121744
www.teambocinegro.com

Capt. Victor Garcia - Dotsy Too
011-34-922-767223
www.dotsytoo.com
Cape Verde Islands

Local legend has it that when God finished making the Sahara Desert, he wiped his hands together and the sand and small bits of rock that fell into the ocean became the islands of Cape Verde, just offshore of Africa's west coast.

One of the main reasons it makes my list is that I've had more blue marlin bites in a single day here than anywhere else I've ever fished. While fishing on Duyfken in 1997 with my sole angler, John Phillips, we lost count of the number of blues we raised. We estimated that between 35 and 50 different blue marlin struck our lures that day!

A few weeks later with Dr. Jim Huddlestun on board, we hooked, fought and lost the largest blue marlin anyone in my crew had ever seen. I called Hooker 15 minutes into the fight and told Capt. Trevor Cockle the fish was still tailing down-sea and showed no signs of being hooked - even with 30 pounds of drag on her back. When the line broke unexpectedly, my wireman, a tough young Carolinian, sat down as tears filled his eyes.

"Don't worry about it," said Dr. Huddlestun, "It was just a fish."

"No it wasn't," was my mate's reply, "I may never see another one like that again!"

So far, none of us has.

Before anyone I knew, or had even heard of, ever fished the Cape Verde Islands, Skip Smith, Barky Garnsey and I looked at charts of the islands and wondered what we might find there. We were already catching large numbers of big blue marlin off the Ivory Coast of Africa and knew about the good fishing in the Azores and the Canaries. Since the Cape Verde Islands lay along the line of the East Atlantic Ridge, right between the Canary Islands and the Ivory Coast, it seemed likely that the fishing would be good.

"I saw the first blue before I could even clear in," says Smith about his first trip to the islands. "A blue tailed past us while we waited for customs at the capital of Praia, down on Sao Tiago. Then we got 17 bites in one day at Sal and lost a grander on 50-pound when our angler got a little impatient. I couldn't leave after that."

This kind of action happens almost every year in Cape Verde, but no one can guess weeks or months ahead of time when exactly that hot bite's going to occur.

Cape Verde

Season - March-August

Charter Operators:

Capt. Zak Conde - Beast'N zak.conde@marlincapeverde.com or zakconde@hotmail.com
(He recommends e-mailing him twice, on different days, due to frequent
problems with e-mail.)
www.marlincapeverde.com

Venezuela

I missed most of the good old days in Venezuela because I was always in Australia from September well into December. The billfish grand slam may have been invented in Chub Cay in the Bahamas, but the triple grand slam, or even higher multiples, made Venezuela the place to go!

In order to get X number of grand slams in a single day, you need at least that many blue marlin. I heard plenty of stories of guys catching multiple grand slams with two, three or even four extra blue marlin and not enough whites or sails to complete the additional slams. It was mind-boggling fishing.

Campbell and Garnsey fished Venezuela for years, and both told me that, "Achilles Garcia was the best light-tackle billfish angler I ever saw." Of course, part of his skill came from getting lots of practice, and Campbell credits Garcia with helping him learn how to hook billfish on natural bait. "He had the best feel for dropping back and knowing when to set the hook of anyone we ever fished with," says Campbell.

The first truly large marlin I heard of in Venezuela was Ronnie Hamlin's 900-plus-pound blue. Then an old friend and client of mine, Dr. Rueben Jaen, caught a 1,056-pounder. All the multitudes of blue marlin were not "rats."

Just when I found out about the good springtime blue marlin fishing, the mudslides hit and canceled my first trip. Then politics got in the way. Finally, and fortuitously, we got invited to film a world-record attempt on fly tackle. We got lots of shots but never did break a record while I was there. But I became a believer.

We stayed in a safe, secure, private marina. We felt perfectly comfortable in several local restaurants, all of which served great food. The marlin fishing was terrific, and the yellowfin tuna were nearly as big as their Pacific cousins. I hope to get back down there in the very near future.

Fortunately, there are still some places we haven't really checked out yet that secretly harbor some great blue marlin fishing. Sometimes I find myself inspecting the charts of waters unknown to me, dreaming of one more place, probably an island, maybe uninhabited, where the biggest marlin ever might eat my bait or lure. In my dreams, we always catch her.

Venezuela

Seasons - March-June - blues
September-November - good shots at grand slams

Charter Operators:

Capt. Jimmy Grant - Waterman
011-58-414-324-4544
capt.jimmygrant@hotmail.com

Capt. Bubba Carter - Tijerta
011-58-414-1098280