Today was less windy and we were blessed with more of the sunshine needed to transform this incredible place into paradise. I had a great day - I went out with Phil and guide Raphael on a permit hunt. These magnificent fish are hard to find and even tougher to catch. Raphael came up trumps and found three large permit to cast to, but we let him down by never really making the most of the opportunities presented. In spite of this we still had a fantastic time with a good horse eye jack, some exciting barracuda and a few nice bones.
The major excitement was provided by Ricky, David and John who booked a day with an offshore fishing operation run by a great guy called Alex. Alex runs a 35′ Contender powered by twin 350hp Yamaha engines. The boys had a brilliant day but only caught two fish, however one of them was a 200kg blue marlin! This fish fought for a full hour and a quarter and did everything from tail walking across the surface to diving to the bottom in 600ft of water. The guys played the fish as a tag team. Ricky did the bulk of the really hard work playing the fish for the first 45 minutess. This was done with 30lbs class stand up tackle without any harnesses or fighting chairs. David eventually landed the fish. Well done guys!!!! There was other excitement too - a full set of teasers was lost to another big marlin, two sailfish took baits but failed to hook up and another tuna was caught.
This superb blue water fishing adds a whole new dimension to Los Roques - the marlin fishing is world class. Alex thinks up to ten strikes a day are possible at this time of year. He really knows his stuff and has the equipment at his disposal to give his clients a great experience. I will certainly recommend a day of blue water with Alex to future rods.