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Many people ask me “What is the greatest angling experience/biggest fish story you have had?”
January 25, 2025 marked the 20th anniversary of the tagging and release one of the largest black marlin ever caught at Tropic Star Lodge on the Pacific coast of Panama.
The big marlin was initially hooked near the Zane Grey Reef in the morning by a Tropic Star Lodge boat, “Miss Alaska” but broke the line right away. The same black marlin was then hooked again 2 hours later by another Tropic Star Lodge boat the “Miss Spain”, with captain Masso, mate Arnufo and anglers Neil and Anne Patrick from Perth, Australia. Location 2 miles north west of the ZGR.
The Guy Harvey Research Institute team and Bonnier film crew were out tagging black marlin and shooting a TV episode. On the “Tropic Star” with Captain Alberto, we went over to film the action on “Miss Spain”. Bill Shedd (CEO of AFTCO) was our angler, Whit Davis our tagger. After seeing the size of the black marlin jumping we decided to stay and film the whole process, putting film producer Ken Kavanaugh, Whit (plus tag pole) and Bill on board the “Miss Spain”.
Fighting the huge marlin on 50# line, Neil was not making much progress. We did not want the marlin to die. After several hours I decided to dive down in SCUBA gear to attach an 80# line to the leader. This would enable another angler to work on the marlin with Neil, so we could catch it faster, tag and release it.
After 5 failed attempts diving to catch up with the marlin at 100 feet, I took my video to get some underwater footage. This time she was swimming slowly and I was able to swim all around this huge marlin. I could see the broken line and leader trailing along the right side of the fish, the snap swivel was about 3 feet past the tail. It was like having a measuring tape. The leaders at Tropic Star Lodge then were all measured at 15 feet. Knowing this allowed me to calculate the short length of the marlin at 13 feet, with an estimated weight of about 1,300 pounds. Wow!
On the next dive I secured the snap swivel on the leader at 80 feet. With Neil and Bill working in unison they brought the fish to leader 40 minutes later. Arnufo did an amazing job in not breaking the fish off, it jumped several times and we got some epic photos.
After 5 hours fighting time, Whit got the satellite tag in, Arnufo cut the leader and the huge marlin swam off. Her track showed that she swam to the Galápagos Islands and returned several weeks later to the Perlas Islands close to the mainland before the tag came off after 9 weeks.
Written by Dr. Guy Harvey
Watch the video:
