The second leg of the marlin tournament that i was in is going on now and they are in their third day out of the 4 day tournament. I told you guys that the biggest fish i caught on my trip was approximately 700 lbs and it took 3.5 hours to bring to the boat and tag and release it. Well i just heard a couple of minutes ago that a boat in the tournament hooked up yesterday at 9:15 am and is still fighting the fish as I am writing this ( 27 hours so far ). That 3.5 hours doesn't seem that long now.

I can't fathom (no pun intended) a battle that long!

Do the tourney rules require one person to stay at the rod? Or can they hand off?

Yowwww

the rules for this tournament allows only the one angler to touch the rod that is until the leader is accessible. Most of the guys who fish these tournaments are using 30 ft leaders so you have to get the fish at least 30 ft from the boat to get any type of relief. although it is not unusual for the mate to grab the leader up to 50 times during a fight like that. all the while the angler still is the only one who can touch the rod. it is havac when the fish nears the boat because if the mate or wireman stumbles or something and grabs the rod for balance the fish will be disqualified. by the way did i mention the lie detectors after each day of the tournament.

holy shmokes! Thats all I can think of to say!

Holy gadzooks. That's a long time.

Mr. Kav, was this a catch and release tourney? I see a lot of tournaments switching to Catch and Release and I think that's great. Not exactly sure how they score points but anything that keeps fish mortality down....

Patrick - not sure if Mr. Kav will see your post anytime soon, as he is at a seminar for a few days, so I'll jump in here.

The tournament encouraged catch and release. You got points for any released fish, 300 per fish I think. However, you could keep fish, and you got 1 point per pound, so if you kept a fish less than 300 lbs, you actually got penalized.

Sorry if I stole your thunder Dave.....;)

I've heard it said about long battles like that:

In the first hour you pray your knots will hold.
In the second hour you wish your knots will hold.
In the third hour you wonder if your knowts will hold.
In the fourth+ hours you hope your knots don't hold! ;)

ps- Where is this tourney going on?

pps- I read yesterday on a West Coast board that a 700-something pound swordfish was taken on 80# line in New Zealand very recently and is a pending line class record. It was taken at night trolling a lure.

Well since the meeting isn't till monday here i am. well patrick to answer your question yes they are promoting catch and release to a point. the rules are as follows. you recieve 100 pts for a sailfish or a spearfish, 200 pts white marlin and 400 pts for a blue marlin. these pts are for released fish only and they give you a disposable instimatic camera to photgraph the released fish and turn it in at the end of each day. the tournament starts out with a minimum lenth ( lower jaw to fork of tail ) 99 inches which is about a 325lb fish. For each fish you boat and weigh you get a 1 pt per pound. if you boat a fish under minimum length you get -400 pts. So it would be better to release a 385 lb fish than get 385 pts for it. I would say that about 90% of the boats fishing these tournaments are out to kill 1000 marlin. I had some friends who were the mates on the hatteras demo boat during the tournament i fished and they were not going to boat a fish it was all release. i guess hatteras doesn't want to get associated with killing marlin but other than that i didn't meet anyone there that was strickly catch and release. By the way the boat that was hooked up on that fish lost it at 715 pm last night which turns out to be a 34 hour fight. That's too bad because rolex sponsors these tournaments and offered 1 million dollars to the team that gets a 1000 lb fish and i heard that the fish was estimated at 1300 lbs. I guess that's why they call it fishing and not catching.

Jeez, 34 freakin' hours and they lost it... I wonder if that guy was po'd or relieved. At that point, he probably just fell into a coma.

Will make for one heck of a fish story, but a cool million would have been better than the story.

Would all you guys and gals follow a tournament like that if it was televised? Just curious. Not sure how they could do it, but I wondered what kind of audience that could attract.

I certainly would watch that before watching golf or the nba... snore.

Though, other than discovery channel, OLN and disney movies over and over, I don't watch much tv anymore. Can you believe I have never seen friends or survivor? Or any other show that most people watch. Doubt I'm missing much.

Did they at least get to see it or have any idea what it was?!

"jaiem" they did get a chance to see it. they had the leader at least 25 times during the fight.

Mr.Kav (05-09-2001 12:27):
"jaiem" they did get a chance to see it. they had the leader at least 25 times during the fight.

I take it then it was a big Blue?

they estimated at about a 1300 lb blue marlin. they got some good shots of it jumping during the initial hook up then it went deep. not to many things that swim can pull upwards of 35 lbs of drag for 34 hours. unfortunately that fish might die with a load of line and a marlin plug in his mouth. he won't eat for some time if he ever does. who knows though that plug could fall out and the fish could just keep getting bigger. i hope.

:(

Wow - that is incredible. But it was a battle that the fish hopefully won (I hope she survived). We can all feel for the fish that beat us and got away.