Marlin World Cup - Mauritius

Keith Arthur's Marlin World Cup Diary

What is it they say about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions?

I left London last Friday with high hopes of bringing you daily reports from the Big Game Fishing event of the year for British anglers, the Mauritius Marlin World Cup. A combination of lack of access to the necessary hardware and the downright refusal to work of a specific piece of software means that I now bring you this news suffering from the after-effects of a fantastic sun-filled week and a 13 hour flight home.

When we arrived in Mauritius the news was far from good; just two small marlin in a week and a couple of sharks. We were also to fish down the moon, with the last day coming after a moonless night. The fact that we were to have five consecutive days afloat with the rest day coming at the end of the tournament to enable us to fully enjoy the gala Presentation also added to the sense of foreboding.

At the team meeting on Saturday night we were at least relieved to hear that three marlin had been boated that day, two of 400lb plus, so the 4am alarm call on Sunday morning wasn't quite as hard to bear.

The Indian Ocean can rarely have been as calm as the one which greeted the 37 boats on the first day. Only when trolling way out past Le Morne, the mountain that guards the south-western corner of the island, was any sort of movement noticeable, and that in the form of a long, rolling swell.

Takes were rare. A couple of strikes were called in but turned out to be undersized wahoo or dorado, both fish that count only when over 25lb.

Then news came in at about 10am that Victor Venguedasalon, a Mauritian now living in Lancashire and fishing each day under the shelter of a Blackburn Rovers cap, had hooked a marlin.

Victor fought the marlin, which had taken a trolled live bonito of about 8lbs, for close to two hours until finally boating it, a great effort on 50lb test tackle.

The fish was a very strange shape, having the characteristic shorter bill of the Blue Marlin but for such a great weight it had a tiny head. The width of the shoulders was out of proportion but went almost the entire length of the body and although many observers estimated the fish at 400-450lbs I put it at 530lbs as soon as I saw it and was not surprised when it whooshed the scale to 568lb.

Three other marlin were released and scored as 200lbs, a Blue on 50lb test for John Holt of New Venture, who spent 20 minutes in the morning playing what he thought was a tuna only to bring a pair of trousers to the gaff.,..a real turn-up! The Marlin was a bonus, I suppose it could be called a belter..

Gabriel Popescu of the Don Quixote team from Lithuania released a Blue on 80lb and KCE¹s Kevin Walker, a regular on the event, released a Striped Marlin, also on 80lb.

Just 11 strikes were recorded from the 37 boats, with four counting.

If the first day was tough, worse was to come on Day 2. Once again the sea looked lifeless and even bonito were hard to come by. Daniel Hoenings of the financial services team HPM had a 254lb Blue and Mike Croft of Newcastle Magpies released a Blue for 200lb, both fish on 80lb gear, counting only half the points that similar fish caught on 50lb tackle enjoy.

The real story of the day was occurring on the Matchroom 1 boat, Tora Tora 1, where Dave Thorpe, fishing with WBF World light-middleweight champion Steve Foster got stuck into a massive Blue Marlin which took a trolled lure on 80 test.

The fish made some spectacular jumps and runs and for 6 hours in the blazing sun..and believe me it blazes in Mauritius, 30sC in the shade at least..and there's no shade in the fighting chair on a marlin boat, Dave battled with the fish.

The skipper, Sebastian, a very experienced and talented captain, estimated the fish at anything around the 800lb mark, maybe less, possibly more. Eventually the double-line, used to join the 400lb b/s leader to the main line parted. It had gone white under the stress and so had Dave. The continuous sweating and hosing down had led to some very nasty blisters and chaps where his body came into contact with the chair.

Steve put things right for the team when he released a Blue on the final day under the watchful eye of Barry Hearn to put the team on the board.

On day 3 the wind came The flat calm had been replaced by a choppy sea, not rough but disturbed as the wind came from the south-east, crossing the south-westerly swell.

My visitisleofman.com 1 team had drawn the Hot Tuna boat, a real flying machine. It is a Tiara, built in the USA, the only non-native-built boat in the fleet and designed for waters where the essential thing is to put distance between land and boat as quickly as possible.

We took the opportunity to show the locals a clean pair of props and disappeared over the horizon. Once out there we soon found a flock of feeding birds, trolled our bonito lures through them and caught two livebaits, a 6lber and a 10lber.

These were slow-trolled back to the tune of teammate Ian Liddle's retching; the up-and-down water had got the better of him and he spent most of the day drifting between the luxury of the double bed in the air-conditioned main cabin and the head, from where his stomach contents were transferred to Davy Jones locker.

Even this groundbait didn't work and we spent the entire day strikeless but our 2 team, the youthful element, posted a score with Ben Gilmour, Robbie Williams look-alike and the team's chief party-er, releasing a Blue on 80.

Glen Hyson of Displacement Design went one better and posted a major score with a 452lb Blue boated on 50lb to add to a 160lb white fin shark caught by teammate Freddy Brown the day before. they had jumped into second spot behind Victor Venguedasalon's Sea Eagles who just couldn¹t find another fish.

Day Four saw the sea restored to its previous millpond status and the fishing was equally flat but for my team captain, Brian Kelly, it was to turn out to be the day of his angling life.

After having just two ephemeral strikes after three full days of pulling lures or livebaits on the fourth day we set out to just rip up the water with an all-out lure attack.

We trolled through several shoals of feeding tuna, both yellowfin and bonito, accompanied by their diving birds, without even reaching for the bonito lures.

But soon the opportunities got the better of us and we resorted to catching, and fishing, livebaits. After ten minutes one of the catalina-rigged baitfish died so it was reeled in and hooked up in a different way and sent down to 40ft on a downrigger.

Less than thirty minutes later the right outrigger rope slapped against the side of our boat, Challenger V and the reel sang a slow tune as line trickled rather than poured from the spool under light drag. After a short time the run stopped and thinking a shark may have attacked the bait we gunned the boat to set the hook. For 300 metres we flew across the ocean in a cloud of black smoke but the line refused to tighten. Something had hit the live bonito but left it.

We were about to wind in when 400 metres behind the boat a silver flash leapt, not once but twice and the reel purred into life. The boat was gunned yet again and we had hooked our prize.

Our Mauritian guide, Christian Lagane, reckons that the marlin had eaten the livebait and decided to have the dead bonito for dessert so had run towards the boat. When it felt the pressure of the line tighten it changed its mind and the game was well and truly on.

Brian Kelly fought the fish perfectly and the effect of a 10lb bonito in its throat and Brian's efforts had the fish beside the boat in 25 minutes on relatively frail 50lb line, which afterwards tested at 46lb.

The fish was a Black Marlin, full of aggression and the most fantastic lavender hues glowing brightly from its massive shoulders. When it was weighed four hours later it turned the dial to 319lb. Blacks have longer bills and broader heads than Blue Marlin, with a more defined taper to their bodies. They are simply great fish.

So the 1-2-3 going into the final day was Sea Eagles, Displacement Design and visitisleofman.com 1 and despite another nine and a half hours of hard fishing on the fifth and final day no-one could alter it.

Kevin Walker released another marlin, this time a Blue on 80 test, and a few more fish were hooked and lost but Victor Venguedasalon's fabulous first day Blue Marlin, which more than qualified him for the exclusive 10 to 1 club, fish of more than 10 times the breaking strain of the tackle, stood firm, winning him both the individual and team titles, the latter for the second time following his 1998 success.

Now back home in England, freezing cold, tans already fading, all we can do is hope to be able to compete again in 2002. Once fishing for Marlin gets you hooked there is no escape!