No one in the fishing tournament universe would turn down the opportunity to start a series of events by catching a 942.5-pound marlin. Many people spend their life times and their life treasures chasing marlin and never even see a fish that large. That it because, at least in part, there are simply very few individual fish swimming around in the ocean that reach this milestone size.
According to an article written in 2013 by I.G.F.A rep Donnel Tate of Maui, 85% of the male marlin he tested were between 100 and 200 pounds. Most male blue marlin stop growing when they get to be about 300 pounds and live to be about 20 years old.
Female blue marlin have been caught in excess of 1,800 pounds and live into their 30th year. However, Tate wrote that 80 percent of females he has tested were between 250 and 600 pounds. Back when all marlin were brought to the dock, the dearth of small female fish made many people think that marlin change sex when they reached about 250 pounds, but nature doesn’t seem to agree.
“Blue marlin are not hermaphroditic,” Tate wrote. “The dramatic difference in size between males and females is known as a sexual size dimorphism. This size dimorphism is not due to a sex change from male to female, but just a differential growth pattern.” All marlin under 400 pounds are tagged and released in tournaments these days, so the age growth ratio studies of old are even more important now.
All that fish biology is interesting enough, but actually a bit of a long winded explanation as to why catching such a behemoth of a fish would make wahine angler Kathleen Wyatt ecstatic. First off, not only is it a fish of a lifetime, but because there are so few marlin in the sea that large, the odds are long that anyone will catch a larger one throughout the Series. Although the Series scores total points, catching a big one early can make you feel good about your lead.
Once upon a time, two marlin over 1,000 pounds were landed in the same tournament, and that was here in Hawaii, but only once upon a time. So yeah, long odds indeed.
Secondly, they won the Lazy Marlin Hunt with that fish and one other tagged. So yeah, she was happy.
Third, a wahine angler leading the Series is also about as statistically probable as one catching a 900 pounder — and for the same reason — there are few individuals female anglers, swimming around in the tournament sea . There are other wahine anglers for sure, but out of some 170 teams, over 90% are male dominated, at the very least.
But lead the Series a wahine with a 900 pounder did — all the way through 7 and 2/3 tournaments. Finally (6 months later!) in the final hour of tournament 8, she and her team on board Sea Genie II were defenestrated by the guys on board Bwana.
Craig Lindner took the Champion Angler position by landing a 468 pound blue marlin on the third and final day of the It’s a Wrap tournament, aptly named because, well you can figure it out. No doubt this moniker was thought up by some clever fellow with little use for the concept of irony after a long hard season, but I digress.
Kathleen went into the Wrap with 4,117.4 points of which only 1,242.5 were creditable to her 942.5-pound blue. She tagged and released 15 blue marlin on top of the points earned from her monster, which is how she kept her lead all season. However, she peaked in the Kona Throw Down where she tagged 8 fish. After that, she caught only one marlin in each of the next 3 tournaments, while Craig Lindner caught fire, catching ten.
Craig went into the Wrap tourney with 3,381 points — a distant second to Kathleen, but second place none the less. Capt. Teddy Hoogs and crew Logan McCollum put Craig on 5 marlin and 1 ahi in the Wrap, and the team earned 1,145 points from fish points and 300 more for their First Place finish in the tourney.
Kathleen tagged another fish in the Wrap and had enough points built up to hang on to the lead of the Series until Pau hana. It was after the call of “Stop Fishing” that the boys on the Bwana sealed the deal, qualifying one more tagged fish and the coup de gras — weighing in a 468 pounder.
Kathleen fished all season with her husband Jamison working the deck and her two sons filling in as needed, mostly by capturing tag and release video. Capt. K.J. Robinson was the only professional on board Sea Genie II.
Irony may not apply to the It’s a Wrap event name, but there is no shortage of it in the fact that Capt. K.J. is in only his second year of being skipper and for the second year in a row, he and his team finished second in the HMT Series. Also ironic, K.J. spent a few years prior to taking the helm on Sea Genie II working the deck on Bwana for Capt. Teddy Hoogs. Together with owner Craig Lindner, they won the Series Championship on Bwana in 2019.
At the recent Wrap, the guys on Bwana did a marvelous job of executing the same game plan that worked for them at Leg 7 of the Series. Kathleen and family did a great job of landing a fish of a lifetime early, and leading the Pros until the bitter end.
Both feats are testament to hard work and tenacious determination. However, while no one would turn down a 942.5 pounder, nor the chance to lead the Series for 21 of 22 days — the cruel fact remains that in all sporting competitions, it is not how you start, it is how you finish.
