Dear Fish Aficionado,

Team Balancal thought you may be interested to hear about the recent exploits in the 4th July Blue Marlin World Cup. Here is what happened……

Fishing was hot and we knew that Madeira would  be one of the favourites to win  with the average size of fish being large and the number of fish being caught in the proceeding weeks.  However one concern was that there were a number of smaller size  blue marlin in the area.  ( Between 250 – 500 pounds) -  this could be great news for the fishery but not if we hooked one on July 4th in the world cup….

We started straight out from Funchal where Captain Anibal was confident we would raise a fish.  At 09.55 Nick decided to change the long left and  as he was winding it in he noticed a large shadow in the water.  When the long left became level with the short left the fish piled on the short left.  The angler got tight quickly but then the fish got off.  The angler then wound the lure back up (all other rods had been cleared by this time.)  The angler then got the rod out of the chair and placed it back in the short left position……at that moment it piled on again! (It may have been a different fish but we will never know..)
This time she did not get off……a tough fish who initially we thought may have been tail wrapped by the way she was behaving, however after 38 minutes the fish was successfully caught.  Now for the big decision – to take the fish or not , after all we were the first boat in Madeira to get hooked up  and would therefore be leading the world cup but for how long….   When the fish was jumping we estimated her to be around 600 pounds.  But now she was close to the boat we were not so sure…
Luckily the decision was made for us when as we were getting the snooter on her she pulled the hooks and swam away…..

Team Balancal then spent some very nervous hours as nothing was caught that was bigger than our estimated 600 pound fish.  By lunchtime the bite was on and more of the fleet were  getting hooked up with fish estimated up to 750 pounds.

It now seemed as though we had made the right decision and let her go.
Now we had to catch the winning fish .

Irritatingly   fortune did not favour the brave…..16.30 came and the tournament was over for us for  yet another year.  However we decided to keep fishing.  At 16.50 a spectacular bite occurred on the long right and we fought a beautiful fish for approximately 19 minutes before getting her to the  leader.

Thanks to our partners Legend Lures and Pelagic.

For more latest news from Balancal  - please check out the website on:

http://www.madeira-marlin.com/news/latest-from-balancal.html