Local MarlinTACKLE ROOM – BLOG/COLUMN BY BRANDON HAYWARD

Friday, October 02, 2009

Local Marlin

One of the most successful owner/operators in San Diego said something to me that really struck a cord the other day: “Really good fishing is like really good surf: it’s like an anomaly. When it’s good, you just have to go… you never know when it’s going to be good again. It’s not epic that often.”

As fall ticks away his words really take meaning. After all, shots at exotics get slimmer and slimmer as the days get shorter and shorter.

While this season the offshore scene for tuna, yellowtail and dorado will go down as being pretty epic, there are more fickle styles of fishing that fall into the anomaly category that First String skipper Bradley Phillips so eloquently coined. The two biggest by far: local white seabass and local marlin.

When it comes to both, to be successful you have to be willing to put the Magellan cap on and go looking (read: find your own fish), while also being able to have good info at your finger tips. You’ve also got to be able to go when the getting is good.

If you ever wanted to have a shot at a local marlin, now is the time. And by local, I mean local — there have been fish caught as close as four miles from Dana Point. The central zone has been around the 267 bank, where a pool of hot 72.8 degree water has marlin volume in it that is as good as it gets for Southern California. Close-to-home fish were caught off the 209 this week, too.

On Thursday afternoon I tacked around with Timmy Husband in his 2820 Parker XL looking for a local marlin — and a marlin story for WON. We saw two marlin just inside the 267 (one sleeper, one feeder) but we didn’t connect.

It sounded like all the big yachts that put in full days had fish, with most of it being on the jigs. Inshore guide Jimmy Decker had marlin for his charters on both Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, he did what is almost the impossible: he had a legal white seabass and a local marlin in the same day on Thursday.

Sometimes you’ve got to create an anomaly of your own!

THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF JIG FISH caught within 10 miles from Dana Point this week. Close-to-home marlin coupled with the fact that they are eating the jigs real good is making for the most user-friendly billfish action that you could imagine.
(WOnews.com photo by Brandon Hayward)

Posted By Tom On 10/02/2009 At 11:15 AM Comments (2) Trackbacks (0)

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