Marlin

Just about every time we let a marlin go in one of our Marlin University sessions, one of the students inevitably asks me how we can tell the different marlin species apart from each another. It's a fair question for most folks who haven't seen a whole bunch of billfish, but even veteran captains and mates get it wrong from time to time - until the fish comes close to the boat. There are plenty of subtle differences between species, but during the excitement of the bite and spray flying all around a jumping fish, you can be fooled quite easily. We fought a 250-pound striped marlin for more than an hour one time, and I was calling it a blue the entire fight - right up until it got close to the boat and raised that tall, round dorsal fin. So here's what I tell our students to look for when we got a marlin on the line and they don't know which one it is:

Black marlin usually swing thicker, shorter bills than blue marlin, and their pectoral fins do not fold back against their body once they exceed 100 pounds. A pretty distinct line runs between the top and bottom of a black marlin; their backs are black, and their bellies are white. However, black marlin can really turn on the light show when they want to as well. I saw a big female in Australia glow bright white in the presence of several small males. She glowed so bright that she looked like a giant white container that had fallen off a ship - amazing.

As expected, blue marlin are usually blue/bluish in color, but you can never rely on colors to identify any species of billfish since they can change from one minute to the next. Blue marlin can have several vertical stripes on them too. Blues have longer, thinner bills, and their pectoral fins can fold back tight against their body. They also have a fairly high, pointed dorsal fin.

Whitey has big, paddle-shaped pectoral fins with rounded ends that glow white when he's hot on the teaser. They can also have stripes, a tail that glows like a hot blue iron and a fairly tall, usually rounded dorsal fin. The striped marlin in the Pacific is almost an exact copy of the white, only bigger. Whites rarely top 100 pounds - an 80-pounder is going to win you a bunch of money in the White Marlin Open! Stripes, however, get up to 500 pounds, although most that you see in Central America are less than 300.

The hardest ones to differentiate between are the small blues and big striped marlin. These two can fool even veteran captains (the guy with the best view) if they can't get a good look at the fish.

POSTED BY MarlinEdit AT 11:07