Great show from this Blue we caught yesterday. Unfortunately it died in a 20 minute fight. It appeared to be tail wrapped at one point. It came up head first dead. We brought it in to have our friend smoke it.
I feel it is important to release this size fish so it is disappointing when they don’t survive. Most of our fish are released here in Kona by the top boats. Responsible fishing is important to us so we eat the ones that don’t survive.
This marlin coming up dead had me test my estimation skills where I technically failed the test. By eye it looked 600 pounds from the jumps. Once in the boat the short measurement was 123 short tip of the lower jaw to the fork of the tail. So by eye I was right. With a 123 inch short it could have weighed close to 700 pounds. It ended up weighing 560 pounds.
My honest weight I would have put on this one if it lived was 600. Wrong. My eyes were right on a long short measurement but where my eyes failed was on the girth that is hard to see. Now in the video I can see how skinny it was.
The honesty in the whole estimation game by these tests helps me get better at estimation but I don’t think I will ever be sure if I don’t put them on the scale.
We set back out jumped a small blue off and caught one around 400 pounds on our way back in. Was I right on that estimation?? By eye yes. By scale we will never know…2/3 on blues and missed a ahi