MAKO TAKES SECOND!

The Bermuda Billfish Release Cup just finished and MAKO finished second!  Chuck McKenzie and his sons chartered MAKO for the tournament and Chuck was able to catch the first Blue of the tournament. The play by play on the fishing can be found here.  Congratulations to Team McKenzie – great job guys!

Warm water is here. Tuna and bait are here. White Marlin are here (in droves) and Blue Marlin have appeared.

After a delayed start, it seems like the season is back on track. We are getting 3-4 White Marlin shots almost every day (don’t ask the hookup ratio on the big lures we pull in Bermuda). As of June 27, MAKO has two Blues under our belt. The first of the year was caught by Jay – his first!

Jay did a great job and brought the little 250 pounder to the boat in short order. Have you noticed how much less fun the traditional swim is now that everyone has phones, blackberries, iPods, etc. in their pockets? It is essentially impossible to sneak up on anyone anymore.

The Yellowfin Tuna have been accommodating. We are catching 4 fish a day in the 50 pound range when we stop on Argus. It sure is nice to have them back in Bermuda.  The Blackfin and Yellowfin both seem more than happy to hit topwater plugs – that sure keeps things interesting.

Tournament season is in full swing, with our friends on the visiting boats pretty much all arrived.  Thoughts are on the World Cup being fished on the 4th – if you are fishing it in Bermuda, you always have a chance.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

- Capt. Allen DeSilva

We just finished a week long family trip to Costa Rica.  Despite concerns about keeping non-anglers and new anglers entertained, the trip was a huge success.

From Pacific 2010-04-01

From Pacific 2010-04-01

Never has the drink box on De Mako contained so much apple juice at the expense of beer!  Chowie started referring to the juice as ceveza para los ninos!

From Pacific 2010-04-01

From Pacific 2010-04-01

Captain Mike and his wife Daphne really pulled together a great trip for us.  We fished four and a half days.  We saw one (!) dorado.  All the rest were Sailfish…and, were there ever a lot of them.  We are pretty poor at keeping score but we had at least 125 behind the boat and at least 100 bites.  We decided to have the mates stand down and do our own hook setting and our hookup ratio showed it!  Given the less experienced anglers (and the crappy performance of the experienced ones) it was to be expected, but it was certainly entertaining and great fun!  Scott got his groove back on the last day going six for eight – pretty good ratio for a guy who has been stuck in Manhattan over the past ten years.

The kids did really well too.  The senior member, at 9, caught three, the 7 year old caught 5, the other seven year old caught a sail and the four year old “caught” a ballyhoo to the cheers of the cockpit audience.

Granny Radke was pretty sharp, teaching the boys how it was done.  Grandpa Radke managed to do some damage to the Sails and the rum supply.  One of his fish produced three amazing pics – shown below.  Pic 1 the fish is hooked and all is well.  Pic 2 the hook comes out and you see the mono starting to spring back.  Pic 3 looks like one of the kids was scribbling on the picture – the mono is a squiggle and the Sail a distant memory.

Non fishing activities included a trip to Tortuga Island on the De Mako.  The island has a great beach with no waves or surge.  The kids predictably loved the sand, banana boats, jet skis, kayaks, etc.  The adults found a shady spot and with the help of the cooler Chowie packed, spent the afternoon sipping beer in the shade.  A special thank you to Arturo who was kind enough to oversee the banana boating operation.  Doesn’t he look fetching in his helmet?  No wonder the female staff of Los Suenos are fighting in the street over him.

From Pacific 2010-04-01

We also spent a day at Manuel Antonio National Park in Quepos.  It is a bit of a ride, but well worth it.  The park and its animals are really cool to see.

Well, that sure was a successful trip.  We ended up catching 5 marlin, 42 (ish) sails and innumerable dolphin for the 6 days of fishing.  Not bad at all!

The weather was predictably great with flat seas and sunny hot days which moderated at night.  Except for the last day, that is.  It blew in the morning!  We all thought we were in the Atlantic.  By the end of the morning, things had settled back down and we started seeing fish, especially after we ran a little to get a change of scenery.  It turned out to be a great call.

One interesting note – Chowie and his understudy, Arturo, managed to both hook the same fish twice in a day!  The first time is was a Dolphin that was apparently starving and the second was a Sail that decided he couldn’t eat just one.  Both circle hooks were right next to each other in the Sail’s jaw.  It was a pretty easy release.

Hope you like the pictures, more reports coming soon as De Mako is fishing pretty steadily for the next couple months.

Ending the Year on 97

We set out from the Los Suenos Marina on another beautiful Costa Rican day.  The last day of the year, and Capt. Mike jokingly said that we had to catch six marlin to get he and Chowie to 100 for the year.

Well, we didn’t quite make it but we sure gave it a try.

For most of this season there have been so many Dolphin around that it was hard to fish for anything else.  We had a similar experience shortly after we put our lines in.  After catching enough for Chowie’s mom’s New Years party that night, we just dragged teasers for a while and watched scores of 20 pound Dolphin try to rip the teasers off the boat.

We managed to leave the pack of Dolphin in our wake (finally) and made it into some really pretty blue water and started looking for those marlin.

The sailfish showed up first and we managed to catch 4 of them by the end of the day.  With only one angler, things were busy in the cockpit.

Finally we saw that BIG splash we were hoping for.  We got the hook set and we were in business with a Blue Marlin around 200 pounds.  Perfect for the 30 pound gear.  The fish put on a show, tail walking and coming 10 feet out of the water.

After the release, we didn’t have to wait long and another marlin hit.  The jumps were far out and into the Sun we we had to wait to get it to the boat before being sure it was a Striped Marlin.  We were all pretty excited now.  Mike and Chowie needed four Marlin to hit the 100 mark for the year and we had just caught two in 50 minutes.

Well, the reason you are reading this here and not watching the made for TV movie on ESPN 87 is because we did not make it.  We caught one more Striped Marlin but that was it.

What a great way to end the year.  One Blue Marlin, two Striped Marlin, four Sailfish and enough Dorado to keep Chowie’s mom happy.

Hope you had a great one too!

- Jeff Radke

Here is a fishing report that I cannot wait to write!  Over four days ending December 17, Black & Blue member Mike Rehberg had a bunch of guys down for a little fishing.

Everything was proceeding as normal until they heard Captain Mike call out, “Killer Whale, right teaser!”.  What???  Check it out.  A Killer Whale came up and bit (and missed) the teaser.  Chowie said it was a sissy bite too.  Well, when that Whale jumped right afterwards everybody headed away from the transom and back towards the salon.

The other great story is that one of the guys on the trip (another Mike) caught, from his wheelchair, a Sail and a Striped Marlin.  That is a pretty cool story to go with those great shots.  Way to go Mike!

Things are off to a great start this season in Costa Rica.  De Mako and Captain Mike have been out a fair amount over the past few weeks and Black and Blue members have had great luck.

While Marling numbers aren’t huge, Capt. Mike is finding them here and there.

Yellowfin Tuna in the 40 to 60 pound range are being caught pretty frequently and on the light tackle used, they put up a great fight.

Sailfish are all over the place.  A couple of days we have seen bites in the thirties and releases in the twenties.  Now that is fishing!

As we head into the holidays, we are out pretty much every day so we should have plenty of stories and pictures to share.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Best wishes for a spectacular 2010.

- Jason Doyle and Jeff Radke

So ends the tournament season in Bermuda. MAKO managed a 9th place finish. Not great, but not terrible. Congratulations to Bree, the big winner!

Our Sea Horse tournament was a challenge. The first day we went 0 for 4 on whites. The second day, “everyone’s favorite redneck”, Todd Holleman put on a one man show catching a White and then a Blue. We managed to catch a lot of the activity on the boat cameras. Look up by the time and date to see that Blue put on a show on top. The third day was quiet again, I think we missed two bites, on a white and one a suspected Blue. We had a big fish come up on the shotgun – at first, I thought the shadow was a Manta Ray – that is how big it was. As is so often the case, this big fish PILED on the shotgun with water splashing everywhere and a huge hole in the water and…..missed the darn lure completely. Ah well, next time.

Just before the tournament the tide (current) switched and is now running into the East. As the bait and fish adjust to this new tide it will take a little scouting to find out where they are living now. It will be interesting to see if the Tuna, which have been great this year, set up again in such good numbers. They tend to get scarce around mid-July, but every year is different.

Until next Sunday…

- Capt. Allen DeSilva

Well, Black and Blue Fishing club, MAKO and the De Mako are just about ready to go.
First, some news about the Club – we finally have the legal and banking stuff done.  It was a bother to set it all up so formally, but in these times of economic uncertainty, we think it will pay off to have dotted the “i’s”.  You are reading this so the new website works. Many thanks to Wade at rainmakerwebdesign.com for his help on the site. Like most things, a website is about 7.2 times harder and more time consuming than I would have guessed. The effort to recruit members is going well with three Founding Members already. The captains and members have emailed the proposal to many of their friends and contacts.  We are quietly confident that it will be a success given the interest we are seeing after a week or two.

De Mako – that is the boat that will end up in the Pacific – is sitting in West Palm Beach Florida.  She had some work done to get her ready for Panama (back up generator, watermaker, satellite phone and TV, etc).  We expect that she will be ready to go shortly.  I am attending a convention of sorts this weekend as Allen DeSilva (the Club’s Bermuda captain), Mike Springer (the Club’s Pacific captain) and I descend on South Florida to meet with Jason Doyle and make sure the boat is ready for the trip.

And what a trip it is.  Florida to the Canal is a long, long way.  While Mike has plenty of experience with trips that long, most of the rest of us are more used to the 750 mile run from Bermuda to North Carolina.  I always think of crossings as being like a policeman.  You are going to be bored or scared…and you really hope it works out that you are bored. We expect De Mako will be fishing in Panama by the end of April.  I know several members have expressed an interest in trying to get down there as quickly as they can.  We are looking forward to those first fishing reports!

MAKO, the boat the Club will run in Bermuda, is probably being sanded as we speak.  Let me explain.  MAKO is being built by Sunny Briggs in North Carolina.  The new MAKO is the third boat Sunny built for Allen and me.  If you have ever watched one of these boats constructed, you know that the process is 1/2 sanding, 1/2 everything else.  Sunny, Jeff and the guys are doing a great job pushing to have her done by May 1.  She is going to be pretty!  I can’t wait to see her overboard. We will add pictures of both of the boats when we get back from the upcoming trip.
– Jeff Radke