It had been nearly two years (in fact exactly 22 months) since I had been on the water due to an incredibly busy medical practice, inability to obtain adequate local coverage so that I could safely leave the practice, some legal issues, and an unexpected medical illness necessitating a major surgical procedure. Finally I just had to get away to maintain my sanity. Fortunately a good friend was able to cover the practice over the Fourth of July period. I had already purchased tickets to Raiatea earlier in the year for the international tournament there in March but was unable to get away then. I paid the penalty for changing the dates and my wife Teresa and I left for French Polynesia June 30th. We arrived in Papeete, Tahiti early in the morning on July 1st nearly 24 hours since we had left home. Our luggage however had apparently taken a different itinerary and was not anywhere to be found. After filling out the necessary paperwork for lost luggage we caught a plane over to the island of Raiatea.

Our good friend Jean-Luc Liaut whose boat we were fishing met us at the airport and arranged the short trip to the hotel. We once again were staying at the Hawaiki-Nui  Pearl Resort Hotel just about 5 miles from the airport. We got settled in and spent the day relaxing and catching up on lost sleep. We couldn’t swim as we had no suits since they were in our lost luggage. That evening Jean-Luc picked me up and took me to the yacht club. There had been a small local tournament that day so we went to observe the weigh-in. Most of the fish caught were mahi mahi, wahoo, and tuna. Two blue marlins had been caught. One was a small fish which I estimated at only about 100 pounds. The other was a quality fish that tipped the scales at just under 700 pounds. That rejuvenated my tired body and mind and gave me hope that we might have a chance at a potential winner for the 4th of July World Cup Tournament three days later which was part of the purpose for our making the trip.

The next two days we enjoyed the resort as best one could without luggage and toured the island with a rental car. Finally our luggage arrived late Monday afternoon, just in time since we started fishing the next morning. And Teresa was egging to get out by the pool to work on her tan.
 
 

Hotel Hawaiki-Nui	28' Bertram "Te Manu Ata"	Hotel Hawaiki-Nui

On July 4th Jean-Luc fired up the Volvo engines of his 28-foot Bertram “Te Manu Ata” and we went fishing. His brother-in-law, a friend, and a nephew made up the remainder of the crew. We were interested in a large blue marlin to try to win the Marlin World Cup Tournament so we ran to the buoy on the east side of the island where we caught a small yellowfin. After quickly bridling the small tuna as a live-bait we trolled that area for some time without a bite and then worked our way north around the island of Tahaa. Our live bait gave up the ghost fairly early so we began trolling a spread of marlin lures. Around the buoy just east of Tahaa we caught a pair of large mahi mahi on a double-header and then shortly thereafter a small wahoo. As the day progressed we worked our way around to the west side of Tahaa and fished the channel between Raiatea/Tahaa and the island of Bora Bora. We experienced periodic heavy showers throughout the day which helped to keep it from getting too hot. The trouble is that the fishing cooled off as well. We had no more action the rest of the day. Someone else would have to win the World Cup as nothing we had caught was a marlin let alone near the minimum weight of 500 pounds.
 

Jean-Luc and Terry	Boat clean-up after a long day of fishing

The next morning we would try our luck again. It actually was sunny the first part of the day although repeated sometimes heavy showers appeared again in the afternoon. We started fishing at the buoy on the west side of Raiatea this morning again trying albeit unsuccessfully for a live bait. The 41-foot Viking that had caught the 700-pounder three days earlier was trolling lures nearby and had a strike from a small blue just after they had passed us. We therefore quickly put out a spread of lures and started trolling. Within 15 minutes we got a short strike from a small blue marlin ourselves but the fish’s mouth did not find the hook. I tried to tease the fish back for another crack at the bait but to no avail. It was quiet for several hours but then we caught a 20-pound mahi mahi and an hour later a 30-pound wahoo. At 1:00 in the afternoon we had a problem with the port engine and had to limp home. The wind had picked up considerably and it was raining so hard we couldn’t see any of the islands including Raiatea. We came in through the reef at the closest pass which was on the north side of Tahaa and slowly worked our way back to our home port of Uturoa on Raiatea. Back at the dock the problem proved to be a piece of silicone that had partially blocked the port fuel line. Once that was removed the engine ran perfectly well.
 

Live-baiting	A small wahoo coming over the transom	A pot-pouri of tuna

The following day was a planned rest day. Teresa and I slept in and then simply laid around the pool and enjoyed some tropical beverages. Later in the day we walked around the town of Uturoa.

Friday morning we started earlier (5:45 am) pulling through the pass just at dawn since I wanted to catch a dogtooth tuna and they were known to bite best just at dawn immediately outside the reef and particularly around the passes. We barely had our spread of rapalas and marauders in the water before the first strike. This turned out to be a 35-pound yellowfin tuna which proved later in the day to make excellent sashimi. Twenty minutes later the rapala went off and after a few minutes I had caught my first dogtooth tuna. It was a small fish of about 25-30 pounds but it was a dogtooth! Not long after that we caught a very large needle fish. It was bright and sunny by then so we trolled out to the buoy on the east side of the island to fish for species with a bill. Once at the buoy we caught two nice lively skipjack or “aku” that were dispatched quickly as live bait. We put one on the surface and one deep on a downrigger. We then trolled slowly around the north of Tahaa all the way to the buoy on the west side where our bait got destroyed by a large yellowfin tuna that somehow missed the 12-0 J-hook. We went back to the buoy and caught another live-bait. This time we stayed on the east side of the island and worked the area outside of the buoy. Just before we were about to pull in the lines our aku got eaten by a 6-foot white-tipped reef shark. I fought the shark to the boat fairly easily and we were fortunate that the wireman was able to pull the hook with the fish on the leader so we didn’t lose any gear and nobody suffered a shark bite.
 
 

Small Dogtooth Tuna	Terry's first dogtooth tuna	Nasty looking teeth

Saturday was our last day of planned fishing. It was sunny early but again it rained periodically thoughout the day. Teresa went out with us this day hoping to give us some additional luck. Since I had already got my dogtooth tuna we went straight out to the western buoy and started out with a live-bait placed down in the water column on the downrigger. About 11:30 it was destroyed by three large mahi. Jean-Luc quickly put out a strip bait on his stand-up rod and caught the largest of the three which was a fifty –pound cow. That was the largest female dorado I had ever seen. All of the large dorado I had ever caught were bulls. We couldn’t seem to catch another bait so we returned to the strategy of trolling lures. We ran a five lure pattern with a mixture of varying colored Joe Yee, Steve Elkins, and Jean-Luc’s personally made lures connected via high-viz Sufix monofilament top shots and braided Dacron line to a collection of 9-0 and 12-0 wide Duel and Penn International gold reels. At 1:30 out of the blue the Elkins green and silver “popsickle” in the short rigger position was knocked down. A few seconds later the small blue knocked down the long rigger bait (a pink and white Jean-Luc special). I teased him with the lure and enticed him to come back twice more. Each time he grabbed the lure and ran a short distance with it only to abruptly drop it managing to avoid the hook-set. He then disappeared. An hour later the stinger rod had a knock-down from a small blue marlin. Again the small male avoided the hook, having grabbed the very head of the lure leaving the tell-tale abrasion on the leader but no scratches on the lure. Just 30-minutes later we caught a small wahoo on that same lure. The rest of the day was quiet except for the pounding rain showers that periodically came to visit us.
 
 

682-pound blue marlin caught in local tournament	Big cow mahi mahi

Well we had a spectacular time once again in the French Polynesian islands even though the marlin fishing proved to be slow. To be fair although blue and black marlin can be caught here all year long the peak time of their appearance is in the summer and fall. This was winter in the southern hemisphere and more striped marlin, sailfish, and even spearfish appear at this time of the year. Large 100 to 150 pound yellowfin and 50 to 100 pound albacore tuna are a staple year ‘round in the islands being caught down deep on hand lines around the buoys. But even these battlers were scarce on this occasion. Nonetheless I did get my first dogtooth tuna as well as some mahi, wahoo, and yellowfin. And with the incredible hospitality shown by the locals not to mention our close friends one can never have a bad trip to this spectacularly beautiful destination.
 
 

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