Grander Search part 19: Vitoria, Brazil January 2001
My videographer Steve Jam and I arrived in Vitoria about noon on Sunday after a long and tiring flight from Atlanta. Captain Jody Whitworth met us at the airport and escorted us to the yacht club where we climbed aboard the waiting dinghy for the short trip to the mothership, which was anchored no more than a half-mile away. It was well after 1 p.m. when we reached the boat. With the wind blowing 15 to 20 knots out of the east it would take too long to get to the fishing grounds to make it worthwhile to go out. We therefore elected to take the time to unpack and recover from our trip. We were staying aboard the 165-foot French Look II, a luxuriously appointed converted oilrig supply vessel that had been rebuilt from the hull up. This was my second time to stay aboard this spectacular vessel having spent a week on "the Look" in the Cape Verde Islands in 1999. The gameboat (the French Look III) is every bit as impressive, a custom-built 41-foot G&S sportfisherman with a hull that can get up on a plane in reverse at speeds in excess of 10 knots. To my knowledge it is the only boat in the world with that ability.
We left the mothership at seven the next morning after enjoying a wonderful breakfast prepared by the onboard chef. Our world-class crew was composed of Floridians Captain Jody Whitworth and mates Eric Leech and Ramie Darling. It was a two-hour run due east to the area we were to fish. There was a fairly nice drop-off there and the fish had been congregating near there for several days. We had our lines in the water at just after 9 a.m. At 10:30 we caught our first white marlin, a fish weighing about 60 pounds, which astonishingly had attacked and eaten a Black Bart marlin candy lure. On the 130-pound outfit he was far over matched and was released in a few minutes. Next we had a blue marlin of about 350 pounds grab the Braziliano on the short corner but he came unbuttoned before I could get in the chair. I caught another 60-pound white on a ballyhoo pitch-bait an hour later. He wouldn't leave our lures alone and kept scarring our fluorocarbon leaders so I finally threw the pitch-bait on a 30-pound Shimano TLD to get rid of him. Next we had a really nice blue inhale the green and black Zulu Impe on the long corner but she started jumping toward the boat immediately and she spit the hook almost without pulling any drag. We estimated her weight at close to 800 pounds. About an hour later we caught a slightly bigger white on a pitch-bait. And shortly after noon another blue marlin of about 600 pounds grabbed the Zulu on the long corner and ran off a hundred yards of line only to drop the lure as we set up on her. We also caught a 40-pound wahoo and a 30-pound dorado before the day was through and had at least another 10 knockdowns from white marlin scattered throughout the day. Virtually all of this action was packed in the six hours between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. What a great first day! We had raised fifteen whites and three blues!
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Early the next morning we were on our way back out to the drop-off armed with anticipation and excitement after the experience of our first day. We had our first knockdown just 30 minutes after "lines in" and caught our first white marlin a half-hour later. The ninety-pounder made our job easier by spitting the hook on the leader for a spontaneous release. After about five knockdowns we hooked another white about noon. Again I was able to make short work of him with the heavy tackle we were using even though this was a respectable fish of about 110 pounds. We had several additional knockdowns from white marlin as the day progressed but didn't see a single blue marlin. Early in the afternoon I got an emergency phone call and had to come back to the mothership to take care of some business at about 2:30.
The white marlin we were encountering in Brazil were acting very different than their northern cousins we had come to know so well with our experience off the east coast of the United States. The whites we knew were a skitterish bunch that shied away from lures and heavy leaders and often were difficult to hook even on live or dead bait armed with small hooks. Their Brazilian brethren were aggressive rascals that were attacking and eating huge blue marlin lures armed with 12-0 hook-sets right off the stern of the boat! The standard lure spread of the French Look III includes a Black Bart "Breakfast" as a teaser on the first wave, a Bart "Braziliano" on the short corner, a Bart "Zulu Impe" on the long corner, and Black Bart marlin candies or Abaco prowlers on the riggers. Captain Jody prefers dark skirts so most of the lures were green/black, purple/black, blue/black, or black/black combinations.
Day three began similar to our first two days of fishing these Brazilian waters. We left the mothership at 7 a.m. and began fishing the drop-off at about nine. We caught several large whites early in the morning that were around a hundred pounds. One came up dead despite only a three-minute fight as the trailing hook had penetrated the lower jaw and imbedded in the upper jaw pinning his mouth shut. After a failed attempt to revive the fish we took him aboard. Despite reports to the contrary we discovered later that evening that white marlin makes excellent sashimi and was equally good grilled as steaks. We were not going to let the fish go to waste. That afternoon I caught two more large whites in excess of a hundred pounds and we had numerous other knockdowns from similarly sized fish. At about 5 p.m. a 400-pound blue marlin came through the spread and gave us a quick zip on the short corner but she didn't catch steel and abruptly disappeared. Immediately thereafter we had three lures hit nearly simultaneously but none stuck. This commotion was caused by several of the blue marlin's white cousins ranging in size between 100 and 130 pounds. I eventually hooked one of them on a pitch-bait. There were five of them in a pack and each took a crack at the bait, all missing until the last one finally successfully grabbed it and got hooked for his efforts. We released him after a fun but short fight on the 30-pound stand-up outfit. We only saw the one blue marlin and didn't hook her, but we had seen 26 white marlin during the day. Interestingly several of the whites we encountered had knocked down every lure in our spread but refused to even offer at the pitch-bait ballyhoo. It seems they were more interested in plastic than in the real thing.
That evening when we got back to the mothership
my friend Chris Allen from Newport Beach, California was waiting for us.
Chris is an executive with a business computer hardware company in southern
California who loves fishing and traveling almost as much as I. He had
flown in to join us in our foray. This was Chris's first experience on
the French Look and needless to say he was very impressed, particularly
since he had been a yacht broker at one time and currently is the owner
of a large yacht himself.
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As we headed out the next morning for our fourth
day on the water we had a full agenda. We would run more southerly on our
way out and fish to the south throughout the day. Then we would drift a
nice deep-water drop-off located some 50 miles to the south all night for
swordfish and finish our trek by fishing back to the north all the next
day. We started trolling about 15 miles farther south on the drop-off from
where we had been fishing previously. The first two hours were quite slow,
but we then quickly caught three whites in the 60 to 80 pound range that
were tagged and released. Chris caught two of them and since he is from
the west coast and usually fishes in the Pacific Ocean they were the first
white marlin he had captured. Over the next few hours we had a number of
knockdowns, mostly from white marlin and caught three dorado in the 30
to 35 pound class. These were quickly filleted for dinner and placed in
the icebox. About noon a very large white marlin that we estimated at about
130 pounds or more came up and sequentially tried to eat each of our lures
without success. He did manage to destroy all of our fluorocarbon leaders.
This fish like those from the previous day would not eat the drop-back
bait and eventually swam away. The remainder of the afternoon was filled
with one knockdown after another from white marlin, dorado, wahoo, and
one large barracuda but none of them managed to find the hook. We didn't
see a blue marlin all day.
About 7:30 p.m. Captain Jody maneuvered the
boat outside of the drop-off so that the current would pull us along the
edge while Eric and Ramie were preparing squid rigs, weights, and light
sticks for our swordfishing effort that night. We fished three baits at
various depths and at varying distances from the boat using balloons as
floats. Our baits were placed between 50 and 300 feet down. The wind came
up shortly after dark and peaked at perhaps 15 knots. This coupled with
the fact that we didn't have a parachute or sea anchor and therefore wallowed
in the trough all night made it a bit of a rough ride. Those who tried
to sleep found it to be an impossible task. One had to stay awake just
to keep from being thrown on the deck. About three in the morning I heard
my rod go off. It was a slow intermittent pull fairly typical of a swordfish's
bite. I grabbed the rod and holstered it in my butt plate. After letting
the fish feed for a while I set the hook. It was not a very heavy weight
but intermittently would pull very hard to the point that near the end
of the fight I actually attached the snaps of my harness to the lugs on
the reel. When I got it to the surface it proved to be a broadbill but
a pup of about 20 pounds. After a quick picture or two we released it.
The rest of the night was without further action.
As dawn arrived we pulled in our swordfish
outfits and started trolling again about 6:45. We had caught and released
three white marlin by 7:30, all about 80 pounds in size. At 9:30 Chris
had a strike from a 250-pound blue marlin that ran out 200 yards of line
and then spit the hook. An hour later I had my chance at a blue. This was
a gigantic female that snatched the short corner bait, a green/black grander
candy, and ran out only about 25 yards of line, turned, and then began
swimming with the boat. She raised her huge head out of the water and for
the first time I could see how really large she was. Her head was the size
of a huge black marlin, nearly five feet across with a bill the size of
my forearm. From the bridge Jody could judge her length whereas we really
couldn't assess it from the cockpit. He felt she was probably 14 or 15
feet long and was the largest marlin he had ever seen, possibly 1500 to
1600 pounds. From my vantage point I could tell she was every bit of 1000
to 1200 pounds and was the fish I had come for. Jody sped the boat up to
maintain tension on the line. I had wound out the slack earlier but was
reticent to apply too much pressure since she was still swimming at the
boat. She didn't like the added pressure provided by the increased boat
speed and turned, abruptly running off 350 yards of line in seconds. I
got to the chair as Jody slowed the boat and began backing down on her.
We were not gaining any line but we also were not losing any. Finally I
started to get line back slowly. She rose to the surface and jumped twice
some 400 yards off the transom. On her second lumbering jump she spit the
hook. When I retrieved the lure the tip of the hook was bent over at 90
degrees. It had been imbedded a very short distance into her jawbone and
bent over and pulled out when I applied some pressure. What a disappointment!
But on the other hand it was quite a thrill just to see such a huge fish
and to actually have her on and have a shot at catching her. The rest of
the morning was quiet. Then at 12:30 we raised another blue. This fish
was about 800 pounds. We could not get her to eat anything including a
large Spanish mackerel drop-back bait we threw at her. She eventually just
sunk out. The remainder of the day was intermittently interrupted by knockdowns
from white marlin, wahoo, and dorado. We boated several of the dorado for
dinner. We spotted no more blues and caught no more white marlin. We headed
in a little early to get some rest since we had not really slept the previous
night.
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Our last day in Brazil again began with a wonderful
breakfast aboard the French Look II followed by a 2-hour run to the edge.
We ventured slightly further north this day to check out new ground. It
seemed the fish were cruising just off of the edge, feeding opportunistically,
and there location therefore could not be accurately predicted. A front
had come through and we endured rainsqualls all morning. They were made
less tolerable by the lack of any significant action. We had only a few
knockdowns from white marlin and no hook-ups all morning. Then about noon
we hooked a nice blue. She had eaten a white-headed Joe Yee super plunger
dressed up in blue/silver and pink/white skirts. It was Chris's rod that
went off and he quickly set the hook and jumped in the fighting chair.
Fortunately this blue marlin, unlike all of the others we had hooked, did
not come off. After a grueling fifteen-minute fight Chris had the 600-pound
fish by the boat and Ramie planted a tag in her shoulder before Eric released
her. She had not really ever been hooked but instead just lassoed around
the bill by the hook-set. We obviously were quite lucky to even catch this
blue marlin. About an hour later I tagged and released a white marlin that
we estimated at 90 pounds. We continued fishing until about 2:30 in the
afternoon but had no more action. Then we ran back to the French Look II
so we could finish packing in preparation for our late afternoon flight
back to Rio de Janeiro and then on to Atlanta. I quickly did the stand-ups
for the show, we filmed the gameboat backing down on a plane, and Steve
videoed some of the interior of the mothership.
As I packed I thought to myself that even though
I didn't catch the huge blue marlin I had come for one would have to consider
this a successful trip. We had caught quite a smorgasbord of fish, all
the way from white marlin to blue marlin, dorado, wahoo, barracuda, and
even a broadbill swordfish. And Chris had caught his first white marlin
and captured a quality blue marlin of about 600 pounds while I, albeit
briefly, had on one of the largest blue marlin I have ever seen. There
is no question that Vitoria, Brazil continues to be a premier big game
angling destination. And as for our repeat experience aboard the French
Look? Well it just doesn't get any better than this!
White
Marlin Action Shots
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