California fishing buddies Mike Mackenback and Matt Mackinga headed their 20-foot fishing boat into the Pacific at about daybreak on October 25. They were targeting wahoo, which had been hitting off the coast of southern California, but they were about to catch something much bigger.
“We ran south, looking for water temperature breaks where we believed wahoo would be found,” Mackenback tells Outdoor Life. “We were trolling by about 8 a.m., with three lines out – one a deep diving plug, a surface-skipping ‘Black Bart’ lure on another line, and a far back shotgun line with a lure.
“We were about 12 miles from San Pedro, trolling on a beautiful slick-ocean with clear water about 1,500-feet deep.”
Mackenback is a veteran marine boatman, having worked on tugboats and as a merchant marine. He knows boats and fishing and trolled fast at 8 knots for wahoo along a water temperature break from 73 to 75 degrees.
“The fish came up and smashed the surface skipping Black Bart lure about 30 minutes after we started,” says Mackenback, 29, who is now a real estate agent in Redondo Beach. “I thought at first it was a striped marlin until it jumped, then I knew it was huge – there was no controlling that fish as it ran 400 yards of line off a reel in one minute.”
Mackenback held the trolling rod which was set with a Shimano 30 Tiagra reel. It was spooled with 80-pound test Spectra braided line, with a top-shot of 50-pound test monofilament, and a 25-foot 200-pound test fluorocarbon leader.
Mackenback quickly realized they had hooked a huge blue marlin that was rapidly taking all the line off his reel, which was rigged for wahoo and much smaller striped marlin.
“I gave the rod to Matt, he went to the bow to fight the fish, and I turned the boat to chase after it,” Mackenback says. “The marlin was jumping and racing away, and I chased it with the boat for a few minutes while Matt tried to gain some of the line it took on those blistering runs.”
Matt kept the line tight on the marlin, and Mackenback got closer to the fish with his boat.
Then the marlin dove deep as it got a second wind during the fight.
“It almost spooled us twice,” says Mackenback. “Matt would gain line fighting the fish. I’d stay over it with the boat, and then it would dive deep again, and again, and again.
“We traded back and forth fighting the fish with the rod. We had no fighting belt or harness – just a small slide on the rod butt cushion. I didn’t think there was a 10 percent chance we’d catch and release it. My wahoo tackle wasn’t built for a giant blue marlin.”
One hour into the epic battle, the anglers decided to just follow the blue with their boat, trying to tire it out over time.
Almost two hours into the marlin battle they gained enough line on the fish that they could see its shiny blue color deep below in clear water. Then it dove deep again, and it was another 45 minutes before they spotted the fish near their boat.
“Suddenly the line went slack, and I thought it was gone,” Mackenback says. “We saw the swivel to the leader, grabbed it, and hauled on the leader to get it close.
“The fish was whipped, I knew it was gone as I was holding 600-pounds of blue marlin beside my 20-foot boat.”
They tried multiple times to revive the marlin for release. But the big blue fought until it was dead. There was no way they could get the marlin pulled up into their Grady-White boat. So, they lashed it to the side of their boat and ran slowly back to San Pedro’s Cabrillo Way Marina where they’d left that morning.
They notified the marina they were coming in with a huge marlin, and a crane was waiting for the anglers to haul the fish up and weigh it.
Their blue marlin measured more than 13 feet and weighed 595 pounds. It’s one of the largest blues ever caught off Southern California. Giant blues are believed to have moved into the region due to unusual water and weather conditions in this El Nino year.
In September 2015, a 648-pound blue marlin was caught 40 miles off San Diego by anglers aboard the boat Pegasus. A 692-pound blue was caught also during an El Nino year off the coast of Southern California.
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Mackenback and Mackinga cleaned and processed their marlin, and had some of it for dinner that night.
“We spent hours processing the marlin into steaks, and gave a lot of it to neighbors and friends,” says Mackenback. “We grilled marlin steaks that night and had a great cookout.”