Feel the Rush: Chasing Blue Marlin

(Originally published March/April 2023)

By Capt. Ricky Wheeler

While there are many amazing feelings you get from fishing that keep us wanting more and more, the ultimate adrenaline rush is that explosive bite from a big blue marlin in your trolling spread. A blue marlin’s sheer size, power, and seeming ability to be in two places at once due to its speed makes this one of the most exciting fish to catch in the ocean!

The introduction of the Omni Sonar as well as the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs) have made blue marlin slightly easier to catch, but that certainly does not take away from the fact that they are one of the most amazing gamefish around to catch. For those of us without FADs or Omni Sonar, guess what, we are not out of luck. We can still get our shots at blue marlin if we work at it.

While there are great locations all around the world to target and catch blue marlin, an area of the world that I feel gets overlooked is the eastern seaboard of the United States. The best part is, we do get some big ones as well. We may not see the numbers that the FADs produce in Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic, but we do get out fair share of chances at catching blue marlin throughout the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Starting in April