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I got back last night from a short-notice emergency blue marlin trip to Venezuela. I was gearing up to go drum fishing when Dr. John Graves called and asked if I could make a trip with him on Sunday. Well, I checked with my various bosses and off we went. It sounds like I missed a lot of rain back home. The weather was nice in Venezuela, cloudy, 80s and calm. The calmest fishing conditions we have had down there. Well, it was calm on the water. On land, I was woken up the first night with my bed shaking all over the place. I did not have a clue what was going on. I got up and the floor was shaking too. By the time I was fully awake, it had stopped. Man, that was one weird dream. At breakfast, John asked me what I thought of the earthquake. People who had a clue, left their buildings or stood in doorways. Having no clue, I got back in bed. Turns out it was a 5.4, a little trimmer for those used to these things but it was my first earthquake.
Fishing was very slow by Venezuela standards. We fished 3 days. For the 3days, we saw 5 blue marlin, got hooks in 2 of them and got a tag in 1. We caught 1 of 2 sailfish. We had a few mystery bites that could have been billfish and we had some toothy critter bites. We caught one of them, a barracuda. We had good catches of large dolphin and I caught a yellowfin tuna. Not one of those big tuna like we have caught on previous trips, a normal Virginia-size tuna. Down there, a single yellowfin can weigh more than a limit of yellowfin up here. Like our commercial bluefin anglers, they break out the harpoon instead of a gaff for those fish. When I got my tuna up, the mate disappointedly put the harpoon down, picked up a gaff, and said bonita. I said that no it was a tuna but he was not referring to the species but to the size. That 50-pound tuna was just a baby.
We fished with Capt. Jimmy Grant for the three days. On the third day, John went with Capt. Bubba Carter so we each had our own charter boat. Both of these guys are great to fish with and are two of the best billfish captains in the world. It has been a pleasure and a real education fishing with them over the past three years. Every time I leave, I can’t wait to get back.
The blue marlin in the photos is the 510th blue marlin caught on Jimmy’s boat since he moved it to Venezuela a bit over 3 years ago. It is also the 50th blue marlin of this pop-up satellite tag study. The study is designed for 60 tags, so just 10 more to go. Another group from Virginia went down there today, fishing with Jimmy and Bubba. Conditions were looking better each day. Hopefully, the bite will really turn on for them We left some of the tags down there for them to deploy so we are cheering for them.
Jimmy Grant: captjimmygrant@hotmail.com
Bubba Carter: captbubbacarter@yahoo.com
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Originally Posted by obxfish
