The Marlin Dance

Over the past few days we participated in the July Blue Marlin Open in St Thomas. It was a nice tournament. The timing of the tournament was so that it coincided with the few days leading up to the full moon. Supposedly also when the blues bite. The fishing was much slower than expected. But all boats caught fish.
Day one had the Black gold in first. Then there was a 6 way tie for 2nd by points. we were one of those boats. We caught one Blue and had another swallow a teaser. The fish that ate the teaser, inhaled it and would not let go. Kyle was actually in combat with the fish for a bit as it tried to remove our cockpit teaser reel from the boat as it nearly spooled the reel. . After a short tussle and a lot of screaming by kyle, the fish spit out the the teaser and disappeared.  Day two for us was dismal. The bite was very slow for the fleet. The Black Gold and the Mixed Bag both caught two fish. We did not even see much of anything.
As a special treat... and I mean special. I have included a video of Kyle doing the Marlin dance. This dance is suppose to attract marlin. I think it is some kind of bizarre mating dance that kyle does. It did not work.
Day three was a bit more exciting for us. We headed out in the morning into 20 + knot winds and scattered Thunderstorms. It was pretty shitty all day. Each passing wave of rain brought gustier winds. I stuck the bow of the Blue Heaven through quite a few waves as the day went on. We hooked a large marlin around 11 am. The fish hit the lure and blew three big holes in the water as it jumped to try to escape the hook. The fish nearly dumped all the line off of the spool in seconds. About the time that the line was dangerously low, The fish slowed down and I put the throttles into the turbos in reverse. We gained back nearly all the line. The fish then decided to charge the boat. Mike Amo reeled for all he could. I had to gun the boat forward just to keep the fish from getting into the propellers. At that point the Angry fish headed down. I mean straight down. over the next few minutes the Blue took back all the line Mike had retrieved. The battle became a stalemate. Mike would gain then the fish would gain. After a while longer, the fish made a frantic run then kinda made a few sluggish pulls. The line then went slack. There was a bad ass big shark that wanted the blue as well. It cut us off. So frustrating. Poor Mike was ready to throw up. But thats just the way it goes sometimes.  Later in the day with only 1 minute and thirty seconds left of fishing before lines out, we had a fish pile onto two of our teasers. It never would heat a hook bait.
All and all we had a great time and look forward to doing it again. Hell if we had caught all the fish we had bite, we would have been in third place.
Congrats to Black Gold 1st Mixed Bag 2nd and Gulf Rascal 3rd

 Man I hope I dont have night mares of Kyle doing that dance.
Today we spent the day doing some provisioning and decided to take the Blue heaven over to Tortola BVI. Tonight is the full moon and there is a notorius party at the Bomba shack. We are tied up at Sopers hole marina west End Tortola. Tomorrow diving the BVI'S