Marlin University is now Marlin Expeditions! We travel to the best big-game destinations on Earth, at peak times of the year, and teach the most cutting-edge techniques to catch billfish. Check out our 2025 expeditions.
I don’t make a habit of planning any expedition without having first experienced the destination myself. I want to see the fishery, ride on the boats, meet the crews. I want to sleep in the beds and taste the food. Why? Because I can’t, in good conscience, ask my clients to pay big bucks for an experience that might fall short. It had been nearly 20 years since Marlin University last visited the Galápagos, and from everything I was seeing—and hearing—we’d been missing out. I first contacted Javier Guevara of Ecuador Fly Fishing Tours in February 2024. A hundred emails, countless WhatsApp messages and many phone calls later, we were locked in for April 3 to 10, 2025. At the time, it seemed like forever away. But as the details came together and the webpage went live, the trip suddenly felt very real. The response? Off the charts—selling out in a record 45 minutes.
One of the major takeaways from the Galápagos is that these striped marlin are not your typical 100-pounders. I knew the fish there were big, but what I didn’t know is how powerful they are. Maybe living around the only landmass within 600 miles of the coastline makes you super tough? I don’t know. I often refer to striped marlin as white marlin on steroids, and these Galápagos fish more than validated that theory. Whatever it is, they are a different breed of stripey.
On one particular day, we had some realizations after most of the day’s fish ping-ponged around the spread until the only lure out there finally stuck one. Frustrating, yes—but cooler than anything you’ve ever seen before? Also yes. Another fun realization was that you’d wish for a double only until you got one. Multiples of these fish managed to eat away at valuable fishing time, some lasting two hours as the fish went in opposite directions. The anglers, all repeat clients, sat in ready mode, reels down to the end of the backing, just waiting for one of the fish to make a mistake. During one fight, my constant glances at the captain resulted in him throwing his hands up in the air, neither of us knowing how to bring the fight to a quicker end. But eventually, the fish gave up, and we were rewarded with releasing both 200-plus-pound stripeys healthy and happy.
For four days we caught stripey after stripey, taking one lay day to circumnavigate the island of San Cristóbal. With our naturalist guides Wilson and Alexis in tow, we headed out to see just how many endemic species we could encounter.
Offshore, we saw albatross, frigates and all kinds of other seabirds and porpoises. Our time spent near shore was also productive. We wanted to see blue-footed boobies, and we did. And even though swimming with schooling hammerheads wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, I knew I would regret it if I didn’t.
We all agreed that aside from the great fishing, swimming with adolescent sea lions in the shallow lagoon at Rosa Blanca was the highlight of the trip. They played with sticks and each other like puppies, just inches away. It was as if SeaWorld dropped them off just for us to enjoy. I already miss it.
