Kona, Hawaii is one of the best places in the Pacific to target big blue marlin, so it was a logical destination for Ian Keinath. The 37-year-old fly fisherman from Montana has been chasing marlin for the past 16 years, with the ultimate goal of landing an IGFA world-record blue marlin on the fly.
Keinath finally got his chance on Sept. 11. He and four others ran offshore from Honokohau Harbor that morning aboard Keniath’s 40-foot Gamefisherman, Last Chance.
“It was the second day of my six-day trip, and it couldn’t have gone better,” Keinath tells Outdoor Life. “We raised seven marlin that day, one was huge at 700 pounds. I hooked a 175-pounder on fly, but only had it on for about 30 seconds before losing it.
“But at about 3:30 p.m., just before we were going in for the day, Capt. Tracy Epstein spotted a pair of fish on our Omni sonar. He headed toward them to raise them up with trolling lures, then draw them close to the boat so I could get a cast to one of them with my fly rod.”
That’s when an aggressive marlin rose up from the depths and trailed a long trolling lure. Boat mate Kyle Vannatta teased the fish close, and when the marlin charged the lure, Capt. Epstein put their boat into neutral so Keinath could cast an 8-inch, streamer to the fired-up fish.
The marlin struck. The fly line came tight. But then the hook pulled free of the blue. Keinath stripped in fly line fast to make another cast to the fish. That triggered the marlin to turn again, charge the fly, and take it a second time.
The second hookset was better, and it kicked off a dogged three-hour battle between the billfish and Keinath, who was using a 12-weight Hardy Marksman fly rod and a Mako 9700 reel.
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“The blue went wild, making a series of five leaping jumps during the first 30 minutes I had it hooked,” says Keinath, who lives in Kalispel, Montana. “Then it went deep.”
Over the next hour, the fish would rise again, make a few more jumps, and then dive back to the depths. Finally, with Keinath putting maximum pressure on the fish with a light, 12-pound test tippet, he got the marlin close to the boat, where his boat crew tried gaffing it. But all three men missed the fish with their eight-foot-long gaffs. They just glanced the marlin’s tail and sent it diving deep again.
“I’m surprised the leader didn’t break after the gaffs missed their mark,” Keinath says. “I really didn’t think we’d get the blue after that, because the sun was starting to go down.”
And at that point, Keinath explains, the battle had reached a stalemate. He’d pushed his reel drag to maximum pressure but couldn’t get the fish to come back up. To help raise the fish to the surface, the captain eased their boat away from the marlin. When the fish got to the surface, Keinath worked it close to the transom for another chance at gaffing it.
“But near the boat the fish went back and forth at the stern, and I couldn’t get it positioned just right for gaffing,” Keinath explains. “It kept switching ends. But it was pretty tired, and I finally got its head up. That’s when Jarad Boshammer got the first gaff into its side.”
Instantly, Kyle Vannatta and Chip Van Mols hit the fish with two more gaffs. Then the three men hauled the Pacific blue marlin up and into the boat.
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“We all started screaming and slapping hands and backs,” says Keinath. “Then we headed back in because the sun was setting, and we wanted to get the fish weighed on certified scales.”
Back on shore, the marlin weighed 106 pounds 8 ounces. This tops the current IGFA 12-pound test tippet record for Pacific blue marlin, and it’s currently listed in the record book as “pending.” (The IGFA recognizes both “line-class” records for conventional tackle and “tippet-class” records for fly tackle.) The standing record, out of Costa Rica, weighed 104 pounds 2 ounces, and was caught in 2007 by Enrico Capozzi.
“I’ve now caught the Hawaiian billfish slam on fly,” says Keinath, who’s retired and spends most of his year traveling the world chasing fish. “It was a long time coming, and it was a long, 3-hour fight I won’t forget.”
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