I fished CDA lake on Nov. 6th and ended the day with 4 pike the largest being 7lb 4oz. So I decided to give the pike a break and I went fishing in Hawaii. While I was there, I watched my daughter get married. The day after the wedding My daughter and I along with her new husband and a couple of his family members went marlin fishing. we started the day like the usual marlin fishing outing. We trolled big lures for about 3 1/2 hours with not a single hit. The captain spotted a whale off in the distance and decided it would be better to show us a whale up close than to see nothing at all. We got a look at the whale from about a quarter mile away then he dissapeared. As he turned the boat and headed for the port, we hooked up on a nice 15 lb Mahi Mahi. Once that fish was in the box andf the lines were all out again, we trolled for about 10 minutes and my rod started screaming!! The fight was on. After about 20 minutes we got out first glimpse of the fish. My son in law got video of the fight on his phone. I phones take pretty good video. If you were to watch the video you would no doubt know what kind of fish it was when you heard my daughter say "Holy $h1+ dad, you got a marlin"!! This monster put on a short but spectacular arial display. After an hour and a half battle, the fish was beside the boat. The guy with my camera got a few less than stellar photos. The captain and the deck hand both had a gaff in this fish and when he thrashed he jerked a gaff out of the hands of the deck hand, knocked the gaff out of the hands of the captain, and took off again. The key here is that while getting in position to land, or should I say try to land the fish, one of them got the line wrapped around the rod end. That's where the unintended catch and release took place. One wag of that 4 foot wide tail and he snapped the 400 lb teast leader attached to the lure. Both the captain and the deck hand assured me that the fish was over 800 lbs. !!! That's big for Hawaii. They both also assured me that the gaffs they sunk into the fish did not do enough damage to kill it. I have my doubts about that. I just hope the fish survived to give the same fight to someone else some day. What an experience. It was a once in a lifetime fish. Sorry for the lack of photos. The guy with the camera was pretty excited. Happy fishing

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