2010 HIBT Hawaii Marlin Fishing Tournament Update- Sunday afternoon

Jon Schwartz of bluewaterjon.com: fishing articles, photography, and travel here with your update for the HIBT, mere hours from the beginning of this epic marlin fishing tournament! We now summon the forces of Neptune, and whatever god is in charge of fish, to bless this event and that that transpires.

Ok done.

Anyway, as you can read in my previous blog post, the captains and mates here are students of big game fishing and rig their lures with exacting detail. I was on a boat last summer called the Kila Kila captained by Teddy Hoogs and the mate rigged a lure over 40 minutes, which ended up looking like this:

                                    

Every color and detail has been careful selected,  every minute thing executed in exacting detail. Then the mate threw the lure overboard ( attached to a fishing line of course) and jokingly said, "Now watch it get bit!"

Within 5 minutes a reel goes screaming and a blue marlin launches itself out of the water, throwing the lure around like a rag doll! It worked! I got some good photos of the action, but they are somewhere on my external hard drive and I need to get on using the images I've got ready for this post, otherwise I'll never finish this cool tale. I had talked with Captain Teddy Hoogs about how we might plan it out so that I could get some cool underwater shots. 

Here's Hoogs:

                                                   

 We decided that if the fish calmed down, and was in good shape, I would get in and snap a couple of quick ones. Under I go, and I got some beauties, clearly showing THE VERY LURE that had been prepared right in front of me on board, yet it was now attached to the swimming marlin!!! 

                               

Look where I put that arrow in the pic, you will see that same lure the mate rigged! Teddy's mate did spectacular job of leadering the fish, bringing it to the boat so I could take some pictures of him holding the line and lure, with the fish still in the water. That shot is going to be on the cover of a mag so I can't show it now, but here you can see a closeup of the deckhand doing the deal, with Captain Teddy in the background manning the controls!

I don't know about you but I was impressed as heck with those guys. As big game legend Marlin Parker stated, Teddy Hoogs is one of the best new captains in the world. It's hard enough to catch and release a big fish, but to stage it for a photographer in the water ratchets up the difficulty level quite a bit!