We left the dock well before the sun came up on the second and final day of the 2008 Marlin and Tuna Fishing Tournament held out of the brand-new Marina Riviera Nayarit on Mexico's Pacific coast. Fishing on the 60-foot Hatteras Perfecto with Carlos Padilla, his brother Javier and Moray Applegate, we departed beneath the cover of darkness and reached the area known as El Banco, 28 miles from Punta de Mita, just as the sun began to peek out from under the horizon.
The game plan was fairly simple: to fill the tuna tubes with skipjacks and slow-troll two live baits at varying depths along the bank's ledges. The bite on day one of the tournament, held during the prime month of July, was uncharacteristically slow, leaving a wide-open window on day two for the 48 teams competing. One good fish, and first place was ours.
Around 10 a.m. we got our first bite of the day. The fish barely nibbled at the bait, just enough to rattle the rod tip. Then line ripped off at a blistering pace for about 15 seconds before it stopped completely. We all looked at one another wondering what species might be scaring the scales off our bait. Carlos Padilla took the rod out of the holder and held it in his hands with the reel in free-spool and his thumb on the line.
"I don't feel anything," he said, just as the line tore off again. He gave the fish a good 10-second drop-back before engaging the drag and coming tight on the circle hook. The fish never jumped during the fight, and we all made bets on the species. When it finally popped up to the surface, we saw it was a sailfish, so we retrieved the hook and set the fish free. Although the sailfish gave us enough points to win the release category, Texas angler Larry Walker caught the big blue we were looking for just a few miles away. Even though the winning fish threw the hook twice, Walker wasn't ready to give up. He began reeling the bait in, and the big marlin inhaled it right off the transom. Walker's blue marlin weighed in at 702 pounds, a testament to the big fish that call this area home.
