Chris and Graham had a great 2 days on marlin and mahi mahi on board the new 43ft Cabo Sportfisher, and really enjoyed the overnight experience in secluded Port Havannah.
Graham was on to his first marlin barely an hour after leaving the harbour and they soon had a nice female blue approx 300lb carrying on at the transom. A clean tag and they set the lures again and headed out towards the FAD’s looking for another fish, for Chris. Just before lunch a bull mahi mahi hit one of the outrigger lures and Chris was onto it, bringing in a good fish all lit up and cart wheeling all over the ocean. Straight after lunch a good blue marlin hammered the short outrigger lure and stripped hundreds of meters of line off in no time at all. Chris was in the chair and he was set up to do battle for the next hour on a solid fish, which went deep and stayed there. Eventually, with some good teamwork and communication from the bridge, Chris managed to raise a tired female 550lb blue marlin, which was tagged and then released. Chris looked a bit worse for wear also but both men had achieved something they had long dreamt about doing.
That night the boat moored in front of The Havannah, a newly built luxury resort in remote Port Havannah, and ventured on shore to relive the day’s events over a few well-earned beers (and bottles of French red) with dinner.
The next day took the guys out wide early on chasing marlin before coming back in to fish around Hat island targetting wahoo and sailfish, finally arriving back in Port Vila at the end of day 2. Captain Chris Donato was stoked with the successful maiden charter, observing that the average marlin in Vanuatu were bigger than the larger models in Samoa!
2 days later on a follow up charter, he experienced his first XOS Vanuatu Blue Marlin as a huge fish appeared behind the boat and attacked the teaser! At the same time, a smaller male Blue took the right short lure and the big beast unfortunately took off. The hooked fish was brought in and released quickly, but everyone was still in awe of the giant Blue they’d just witnessed smashing the teaser only metres behind the boat!
Things are really starting to heat up in Vanuatu, stay tuned for more reports as the season progresses and the fishing gets even better!
