By Karen Wall
HOOK UP!
A Book About Offshore Fishing
(But Not Like The Rest)
By Ed Martin
528 pages
Self-published by Ed Martin
For sale on Amazon and Good Reads
Ed Martin has made his mark in big game fishing over more than eight decades of his life. He’s caught every species of billfish, been honored by the the Balboa Angling Club in Newport Beach, California, and the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, and served as chairman of the Billfish Advisory Committee to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council.
One of his favorite activities, however, has been sharing his extensive fishing knowledge with others, from helping others catch and release billfish – he’s helped others catch more than 3,000 billfish – to championing sustainable fishing practices and educating others on the importance of those practices.
Martin, who was recognized as a “Legend in Sport Fishing” by The Big Game Fishing Journal in 2009, chose writing a book as a new avenue for sharing the knowledge he has gained about fishing over his 100 years of life (he was born in 1925).
In Hook Up!, Martin says he aims to “offer a set of guidelines that keeps it simple and has been proven successful over the years.”
It’s not a book about how to tie knots, but one loaded with tidbits of fishing history and that Martin experienced while fishing mostly in Southern California, Mexico, Costa Rica and other western sites.
There are anecdotes about fishing adventures with his wife, Betty, and the moments that stay with any angler, such as the 145-pound bigeye tuna he caught on 20-pound test while fishing in a tournament. There was no tuna category, so Martin and his tournament crew took it to a Japanese sushi chef and had it for dinner.
Two days later they learned – to everyone’s chagrin – that it would have been a world record if they hadn’t eaten it.
Martin was 97 when he wrote the book and turned 100 in 2025. He says fishing has kept him going strong.
“With nothing else to do at my age, it (writing a book) sounded like a good idea,” he wrote in the foreword.
It’s certainly a book with something for everyone.
