I'm often asked if any particular catches are more memorable than others. Of course, the biggest marlin stand out, but other fish stick in your mind for different reasons. One of my most memorable was a black marlin that we tagged and released one day in the middle of Australia's Cormorant Pass. This fellow then turned on a dime, crashed into the boat and skewered my deckhand in the chest with its massive bill. That was 30 years ago, but the day remains burned into my brain; I could never forget that fish. Those of you who saw professionally distributed copies of the home video shot that day probably won't forget either, and many of you have questioned me about the day Jimmy Burns got speared.

My team on board Kingfish included angler Bill Chapman and wire man Emmett ''Mutt'' Coble. I had talked another captain, Jim Burns, into coming along as our third crewman for a couple of weeks. Burns was a handsome young man with a beautiful wife and two small children. A bricklayer by trade, he had a great physique with a sculptured musculature from lifting thousands of bricks and concrete blocks.

Joining us on the first mothership trip this far north of Cairns were noted Australian Capt. Peter Bristow and his crew and charter on Avalon. Along with our catamaran mothership, the Tropic Queen, we trolled north along the outside edge of the Great Barrier Reef until we were due east of Lizard Island, where we reached the top of Number Ten Ribbon Reef.

We enjoyed wonderful fishing as we progressed farther and farther north, but wondered each day when we were going to get too far up the reef and run out of fish. Some days one game boat would have slow fishing, but the other would have a great day, so we kept pressing on into new territory.

I couldn't believe my eyes the morning I saw a sleek sport-fishing cruiser approaching from the north. Garrick Agnew, an Australian multimillionaire, had heard about the giant marlin being caught off Cairns and had run his custom-built 53-foot Pannawonica completely around the top half of Australia, over 3,000 miles from his home port of Perth. On Kingfish we had already tagged two or three marlin that day, and just before the two boats met in the middle of Cormorant Pass, we hooked up again.

The fish made a long run with enormous greyhounding leaps across the surface. Anywhere else in the world, the 600-pound marlin would have been a trophy. Here it was slightly above average, but no where near ''large'' and well short of the ''it's-a-horse'' distinction we used for marlin over 1,000 pounds and later called ''granders.''

The hook might have started out in the fish's mouth, or maybe it was hooked in the fish's back from the start. In either case, the marlin rapidly took line off the big Fin-Nor reel faster than I could back up in Kingfish. It took 200 yards out before I could get the boat turned around and give chase. I ran at planing speed from the control station in the tower. As we chased the marlin across the waves I could see the remains of the scad bait lying on its shoulder, where the hook had caught near the dorsal fin.

Chapman had recovered most of the line by the time the marlin began to slow down to recover from the oxygen debt incurred in the long, sustained run. All those majestic leaps had helped burn up the available oxygen in the bloodstream, and oxygen was necessary to allow the mighty muscles to function.

The thought flashed through my mind that here was our chance to show the new guys how a really good crew fought and caught marlin. I dropped from the tower to the flying bridge and spun Kingfish with the engines to back up after the marlin. Because I had stopped in a position up-sea and upwind from the fish, I was able to back up fast with no water pouring over the transom covering boards and with little spray even reaching the angler and crew.

The marlin continued to swim down-sea and came up to surf on the swell and chop generated by extended periods of 15- to 25-knot southeasterly trade winds. As the fish got a free ride from each wave, the tip of its huge sickle tail would protrude slightly above the surface of the water, and through our polarized sunglasses we could all see the color of the huge body under the surface.

I kept Kingfish backing up hard but angled her off to one side. Once Chapman had two turns of the 30 feet of doubled 130-pound line safely around the reel, he increased the drag. With the boat racing back after the fish and the increased drag slowing the marlin's forward speed, we continued to gain line until the big snap swivel connecting line and leader came within Coble's reach.

Coble, a tall, burly and athletic man, took hold of the swivel and heaved, then got a wrap of wire around a gloved hand and heaved again. The fish came ever closer to the boat. Now I could see that the leader was tangled around the fish and was pulling from a point behind the rigid bone of the pectoral fins. The marlin was both hooked in the dorsal fin and lassoed by a hitch of wire around its body. Coble would not be able to lead the fish from the head; he would have to try to pull the 12-foot-long, 600-pound body sideways through the water.

The black marlin and the boat were both racing down-sea with the fish alongside and to starboard. It was swimming parallel to the cockpit, with its head even with our transom, when Burns stepped in for the tag shot. As he reached out with the 10-foot tag pole, the marlin spurted forward past our stern and hurled itself into the air, out of his reach.

''Don't break it!'' I yelled from the bridge as the marlin launched itself into the air again. Coble bent his knees to keep his body low so he could pull against the steel wire with his full strength. The marlin's leap went up more than out, and Coble, gauging the strain on the wire, continued to hold on. As the marlin went airborne in a high reverse somersault, Burns scuttled around Coble to reach out over the stern to apply the tag. I rapidly shifted from reverse to forward, then applied full throttle.

''Watch your hands!'' I cried as water from the spinning props jetted out from under the stern. It first stopped our reverse momentum, then started accelerating Kingfish forward. The boat was starting to move away from the fish, but although I didn't know it yet Coble's thickly gloved hands were not our greatest concern.

Burns reached far out over the transom and tagged the marlin in the shoulder as it finished the somersault and landed on its side with a huge splash. The video camera shows Burns backing up to get away from the marlin as it instantly jumped again - this time directly toward the boat.

I remember the boat starting to move, but too slowly. The video shows Burns getting caught on the armrest of the chair and being unable to move away from the oncoming fish as it came over the covering board and half into the boat. In the video you can see the bill making contact with Burns' left side. Some people even claim to see a bulge in the back of his shirt in one frame.

I heard a cry that registered at the time as ''got him'' as the fish landed half on the covering board and fell back into the sea. I thought the crew meant the tag was in, and we didn't need to continue with the fish. The boat sped away from the tagged marlin, and Coble hung on and broke the wire. Then I saw Burns clutch his chest, sit on the starboard gunwale and stagger into the salon and out of my sight.

I stuffed the gear levers into the neutral position and leapt from the bridge into the cockpit. I was the first one to reach Burns, who sat on the salon floor, leaning against the portside daybed. He was holding his chest, slightly to the left of center, directly above where most people think the heart lies. Blood stained his shirt and oozed through his fingers.

My heart sank, and I thought to myself, ''Oh God, I talked him into coming with us, and now I've killed him. And his family - what'll they do? I've really done it this time!''

I remember feeling terribly melodramatic as I grabbed his collared polo shirt and ripped it open. I was expecting a huge hole right in the center of his chest, and when I saw a smaller wound over to one side, closer to his armpit, I felt a rush of relief.

The relief was short-lived when I realized that the tissue I could see protruding through the lips of the wound was part of Burns' lung that had been pulled out when the rasplike bill exited after penetrating his upper body. I grabbed half of the torn shirt and wadded it up to hold it over the wound.

''Get me something to make a bandage,'' I said over my shoulder to the others who stood behind me. ''No, not the paper towels. Get a clean sheet and tear it into long strips.''

We made a bandage of a folded section of sheet secured with strips of sheet tied around his chest and made Burns as comfortable as we could. He sat on the salon floor, leaning back against a corner formed by the day berth and the bulkhead. ''Let him rinse his mouth with water,'' I said to the others. ''But don't drink anything, Jim. We're heading for Lizard Island. You're going to be all right.''

The Vietnam War was still in full swing with guys suffering horrible chest wounds every day, and I figured that if we could get Burns to a hospital quickly enough he would be OK. Briefly, I thought about the risk of infection from the material that the fish's bill could have introduced, but reasoned that if Burns lived long enough to have an infection, with modern antibiotics his chances of coming through this were excellent.

I grabbed a chart and ran up into the tower. There was no Loran or GPS in Australia in those days, and no buoys or aids to navigation in these remote waters, but a glance at the chart showed a narrow pass through the outer reef, then several miles of open water with no worry about coral heads. I grabbed the radio and called a Mayday, which was answered immediately, as I throttled up and started to run for help.

Within minutes I had relayed our situation to Bob Dyer, who was fishing much farther south on his Bertram Tennessee II. I planned to head for Lizard Island and asked that the Royal Flying Doctor Service send one of its airplanes to the small dirt landing strip that I had been told existed on the uninhabited island. Confirmation of my message and the successful relay to shore by boats nearer to Cairns brightened the outlook.

I stopped in the calmer, more protected water inside the reef and went below to check on Burns. I unwrapped the blood-soaked bandages to reappraise the damage and relay it to the doctors. Burns tried to sit up, but blood poured from the hole in his chest, and he fell back against the bunk. I was sure that what I could see was lung tissue, but Burns' pulse remained strong, and he was conscious, alert and breathing slowly and steadily. I reapplied the bandages.

''I got through to Bob Dyer, and he relayed it to Cairns,'' I told him. ''The flying doctor has been contacted. You're going to be OK.'' I tried to be more optimistic than I felt and didn't say anything about the punctured lung.

Chapman came into the tower with me and held the chart open in the wind so I could see how to approach the island. I had decided to run the boat up onto the beach if necessary, but we found a small commercial fishing boat in the anchorage and borrowed a dinghy.

We moved Burns off the deck and onto the bunk once we anchored in the calm waters of the lagoon. After talking to him and again checking his pulse, I went ashore and found a caretaker, the sole inhabitant of the island, living in a tent on the beachfront site where a fancy new resort that would become today's Lizard Island Lodge was soon to be built.

The caretaker's radio had the flying doctor frequency, and soon I was talking to a doctor who was already in the air aboard an air ambulance. They would be able to land at Lizard Island in under an hour. ''Take off the bandage and make an airtight covering over the wound. We want to prevent his lung from collapsing if it hasn't already. Plastic cling wrap under a bandage will do,'' the voice said through a background of static. ''Move him ashore, off the boat - we can do surgery on the spot if necessary.''

We decided not to follow these instructions. The inside layers of sheet were soaked with blood, and I was sure our bandage was already airtight. The boat was cleaner than any place on the island, and it was completely still in the anchorage in the island's lee. If there was emergency surgery to be done, we would let the doctor decide if the island was better than the boat.

We waited alongside the dirt strip with a small tractor. When the plane landed we carried a doctor and nurse with two large wooden cases and a stretcher to the beach and ferried them and their equipment to Kingfish.

Quickly and efficiently the team sprang into action. The wooden boxes unfolded into an emergency operating theater, complete with instruments and oxygen. They could have done open-chest surgery on the spot, and my relief at no longer being in charge was enormous! Less than two hours had elapsed since the accident.

After an inspection that revealed a partially collapsed lung, we strapped Burns onto a stretcher and transported him by boat and tractor back to the waiting airplane. After takeoff, the plane flew at almost zero altitude, skimming the waves en route to Cairns. A decrease in atmospheric presure from a high-flying airplane could be fatal.

The pitch dark of a moonless tropical night caught us several miles short of our mothership. I picked my way slowly through the treacherous coral heads with the the aid of a spotlight. When we finally reached safety at Tropic Queen, they yelled across the water that the evening news on the radio had reported Jim Burns was resting comfortably in Cairns Base Hospital in ''good'' condition. Our ordeal was over.

Postscript: Within two weeks, Burns was back at sea running a boat. When we got a chance to talk, I told him I had not wanted him to know how serious I believed his injuries to be as we ran for help. He in turn had thought we did not appreciate how badly he was hurt.

''I had this feeling that if I could keep from coughing and tearing myself up I might make it,'' he said. ''The urge to cough was awful, but I tried to keep breathing steadily.''

The doctors told Burns that the punctured lung was serious, but even more important, the tip of the bill had missed his heart by only millimeters. His heavily muscled chest possibly provided that fraction of an inch that meant the difference between life and death.

Every year, the Royal Flying Doctor Service gets my grateful donation!