Manta Ray

On our last trip offshore, we were followed around by a whale shark. This weekend, it was a manta ray. We will see manta rays out there sometimes. This one was particularly large and it is the first one that wanted to stay with the boat. Typically they will spook and swim down. Not this one, it swam right up to the transom. It has been like the Georgia Aquarium out there. It would start to swim off and then would do a summersault, like I have watched the manta rays doing in the aquarium in Atlanta, and swim right back. It did this several times. I’m not sure what is going on with these creatures but I wish I could get the marlin up to the boat like that.

We did catch a couple of white marlin and jumped off/pulled off/plain missed others. We caught some dolphin and we caught some tilefish while catching bait. We have been trying to live-bait billfish by catching chub mackerel near the Norfolk Canyon and slow trolling them around. We’ve got the bait catching thing down. The hooking marlin thing, not so much. We’re doing good on sharks. Besides the gentle giant visitors, we have been having plenty of big toothy sharks coming in and eating our mackerels. It is amazing how well a light leader and small circle hooks do with catching big sharks.

While we were slow-trolling for billfish and catching sharks, the Wine, Women and Fishing billfish tournament was going on. Two of the boats trolled near us. One hooked and caught a marlin right beside us…they were happy about it. The tournament was won by the Git-R-Done. They caught a blue marlin and sailfish during tournament time for the win and rounded out their Grand Slam with a white marlin right after lines-out.

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