The bait balls can be static, but more often they move and their movement below the water is mir-rored by the frigate birds and gulls and pelicans above. If the bait drops down, the frigate birds climb, and it’s said the frigate birds are as high above the water as the bait is below. And all the while, grown men and women are screaming, shouting, hooting. It’s chaos. Mayhem in the water and above the water like you’ve never before seen. You’ve never been encouraged like this before, and it’s not just encouragement. It’s pure awe. Raw stoke. The sheer pandemonium is right in front of you, as is the otherworldly neon blue of aroused, feeding marlin. You cast smack dab to the middle of the moving bait—where Rudy nonchalantly said to cast—and you put the rod under your armpit and strip two-handed as fast as you can. Your peripheral vision goes hallucinogenic, but within your line of sight neon blue marlin dart wide-eyed, hunting. When you come tight, you dance like someone walking on hot coals attempting to clear your line. The reel spins, the fish jumps. Now the fish tries to go deep. It gets its way, and you feel as though you’re pulling on a whale, but after 15 minutes or so—relatively quick—Noah Thompson, deck-hand extraordinaire, is grabbing the leader and • RIGHT • grabbing the thrashing bill and that neon blue dart is boatside. If there’s a lull in the action it happens after drifting away from a bait ball, with a fish on, and after landing and releasing the fish. Exhilaration replaces everything. It may have been beautiful. Or maybe not. Tacón, the captain, turns on the music and dances and grabs a couple of beanbags and throws them to the stern. Tacón Arechiga had a rough life before finding Los Locos and he relishes the op-portunity to be high-fiving you. You can tell too. “Amigo,” he says, and hugs you. Marlin free jump occasionally and humpback whales breach and pound their flukes on the sur-face, sending spray outward, unmistakable from even hundreds of yards away. Returning, Isla Santa Margarita comes into view, with its stark moun-tains jutting 1,800 vertical feet above the water. Your new favorite song is playing above the drum of the outboard. The swell grew while fishing and the wind picked up and the boat, under Tacón’s control, bangs the downside of swells sending wa-ter over the center console and onto your face. Your back hurts from the pounding but you don’t say anything about it. Everyone’s back hurts. There’s very little downtime with the Los Locos crew, and after a long day in the blue water and a few cold beers on the edge of a nearby table, Rudy Babikian and Meg Forelli get in a little cornhole.
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.4: Page 86
