This is neither the beginning, nor end of Marlin Fever. It’s hard to pinpoint when it starts, and even harder to know where it might go!

It sneaks up on you, until one day you notice how it has altered your perception. Any fish you catch that's not a Marlin, is judged on suitability as Marlin bait. You look differently at Tuna and Mackerel than other men.

Marlin fishing involves a lot of sitting in a boat trolling for hours and hours. Nothing happens most of the time. It’s as boring as bat sh+t, or watching paint dry. In fact its a boring as watching bat sh+t dry.

This changes immediately once a fish hits your lure, then its time for Madness & Mayhem to step in. See if all that time and effort you put in will pay off this time.

Win or lose, the fever just gets stronger.

From Jan 2003 till the end of March we must have put in over one hundred hours watching bat sh+t dry. All for no fish, a couple of half hearted strikes was as good as it got.

The Super Dory provided the platform, and the Eskasaurus provided refreshment. 'Big Jims' were introduced to the Toukley RSL, providing commiserations after the days fishing. We ended up having to train three sets of staff for this. Fortunately they were quick learners. Then it was up and back out again the next morning.

This was also intended as Dory Conditioning before my April Kanimbla trip. The hours spent fishing all add up, if you are stubborn enough, and try long enough, you should get there in the end.

The first law of fishing should probably be - "Fish Where the Fish Are". Does not matter what else you do, that is a requirement. This is why we will fly all over the country, or spend twenty hours steaming to a far off reef.

Which is what we did, heading on Kanimbla to Saumarez Reef, via Gladstone. We trolled for several hours on the way out. No Marlin, but we picked up some fish close to the reef. I was not surprised. Fourth trip out and never caught a Marlin out there. This was at least another chance to refine tactics, even when it doesn't work you are closer to getting it to work.

We fished for about three days at Saumarez, and each day the action just got better and better. No Marlin, but a few more tactics tried.

The weather was spectacular. As you can see from the moon shot to the left, Tuesday night was calm and clear. There was zero wind. Smoking on the duckboard was an interesting experience. All the smoke just stayed in one place. Was worse than smoking in a closet!

Somehow I never made it to bed that night. Not sure why. Had something to do with the adrenalin, and being out where the fish are. The Marlin Fever was stronger than ever. So I just kept on fishing and drinking. At least I got a photo of that dawn.

The sky was clear and the ocean was dead flat. If it wasn't for the brilliant blue colour of the water, you would think it was an oil slick. The fishing matched these conditions, and was nothing short of "Mind Blowing". Action in the morning was electric and it picked up for the troll out.

Here was me, trying to get a skirted lure tuned up and in the right place. All around me people are hooking into Tuna and Wahoo every couple of minutes. Stopping to jig for a few minutes after hook up generally produced even more fish!

Once we got past the edge of Saumarez the action dies down. I had my lure in, tuned and ready. At least no sharp toothed tackle wreckers had destroyed my marlin lure. It was time to drink more VB, grab a pile of bat sh+t and watch it dry.

It finally happened. The lure got absolutely monstered. A Black Marlin (est. around 350lbs) grabbed the lure and went flying into the air. I caught all this out of the corner of my eye. I always troll my lure on the beer fridge side, it pays to stay close. That is to the VB as well!

This was just before 5pm. I had been awake for thirty-five hours, drunken forty-five cans of VB, half a dozen Big Jims and smoked two packs of cigarettes. I was as ready as I was gonna get!

In that split second, the trip had gone from "Mind Blowing" to "Marlin Fever Pitched".

The Marlin had come in from the left, hit the lure, come out of the water, and then smashed into the other lines out the back of the boat. There were ten other lines and lures there, including one Robson outrigger. The fish turned all this into a mess. Madness & Mayhem had decided to pay us a visit.

For some reason there seemed to be confusion about who had the fish, or what it really was. Most missed the very first jump, and were doubting my call of Marlin (despite its volume and frequency). Then she jumped out of the water again, this really got everyone fired up.

Confusion still reigned about who had what fish, what kind of fish, and how many fish there were. But those still attached began frantic winding; the fish had turned and was coming back to the boat. She wanted to see what she had caught!

She came right up to the boat. The leader came up and we could see the mess that had been created. The good news is that my lure was there, and the hooks were solidly in her mouth. The bad news is that there were two bibles lures tangled around my lure and leader. Each with two undoubtedly sharp hooks. A quick attempt was made to disassemble, but the fish would have none of this and bolted off.

After some discussion with Steve and Hodgie, it was agreed that they would cut their lines. It was our best chance if we wanted to land the fish, and we hoped it would work out alright in the end.

Meanwhile the fish was going at full Marlin speed around the side of the boat. I was hanging over the side of the duckboard, holding onto the reel, with line rapidly melting off. There is no railing or anything between you and the water on the duckboard. A precarious position, but at least there some chairs to make it a bit easier to fight the fish.

Bruce, the skipper, immediately began delicate maneuvers with the 80ft floating island. He got the boat turned, and I was now able to fight her from the back of the boat. We kept orientated on the fish through out the fight. A pretty good effort when you consider how far the skipper is from the action, and that he can't see what’s going on. Les, the other deckie, was up the top relaying instructions through one of the dory radios. Adam stayed with me on the duckboard, to provide support.

Miss Marlin had her own agenda. This seems to involve swimming the hell away from us at top speed. 600mtrs of 24kg does not seem like much when you are watching it melt off the spool, and melt, and melt and melt.

I finally got enough pressure on the fish to turn her head and stop the run. Or, much more likely, she stopped for some reason, then proceeded to head shake and thrash on the surface.

She was a couple of hundred meters back of the boat at this stage. It looked to some like it was a different Marlin jumping, my line was going straight down. But it’s just the belly that forms in the line. The fish had been changing direction as it run; the line was following it like carriages on a train.

Pretty important at this stage to be winding like a mad thing. You have to take up the belly slack, otherwise the line goes loose. Once the line is loose, the hooks can just drop from the Marlins mouth.

And for good measure, she swam at the boat really fast. The winding like a mad thing continued. We got the boat in motion to take up some of the slack.

She pulled up tight and we got a little brave. The skipper backed the whole island down on her and we got pretty close. It was a relief to see all that line back on my reel where it belonged.

After about half an hour I did get her up to the surface, and close to the boat. Nobody expected to be able to land her yet, she was still pretty green. But we had seen the leader and hoped for a chance to get those pesky tremblers off it.

We got the leader up and the Bruce and Adam got to work untangling everything. The fish was just lying there, eyeing us off from the water. Probably thought it would give me a chance. After all this was for sure the biggest boat that marlin ever caught. She probably did not want us to get away just because the leader wore through.

The lures had been mostly detangled, and Adam had the lures and a big knife in his hand. He was just checking if he should cut the green wire or the blue wire. At this point the marlin had had enough. A bit of surface thrashing action to get the leader out of the skippers hand, and then she powered off again.

The lures (thank God!) slipped through Adam's hand and did not take his face off! Slow motion video shows how close this was.

The tremblers then conveniently tangled on the duckboard while the marlin continued to run. Adam was able to grab the lines and cut them off. It looked like plain sailing from here on out. Apart from the fact that my lure and leader had now tangled on a bollard, but somehow they detangled themselves, we were in the clear.

About another twenty minutes or so and I had her back up to the boat. She had obviously shown all the charity she would, and proceeded to hang deep, right under the duckboard.

Winding brought her in, and then directly under the duckboard. I was unable to get her head up. She would make a lunge at the duckboard, and we would move the boat forward.

After a while we tried to keep her close and somehow get her head up. Once her head was up, she should come to the surface. By now I had the drag lever pushed up to full. But keeping the pressure on in close resulted in the line rubbing on the duckboard. Plenty of fish have been lost like this.

Some slick moves from Adam and he was able to keep the line off of the duckboard using his hand. Drag pressure adjustment and somehow the line did not rub off. This happened a few times, but we were on top of it by then.

Of course, once you think you have something sorted, a new twist comes along. There is a small gap between sections of rubber guard over the end of the duckboard. This was the Marlins next trick, get the line caught in this gap. But somehow we overcame that too.

I have no idea how I stayed connected to this fish. Things went more wrong, more often, than on smaller fish that I have lost. I was either the luckiest man alive, or that was the unluckiest fish.

So after about one hour and ten minutes we had the fish on the surface and at the duckboard. We lowered the duckboard down into the water and slipped her on. Because three people couldn't lift her!

She was a magnificent animal, and just under 3mtrs total length. We took heaps of photos and then put her back for revival. This took about 5 minutes, but she was kicking strong with her tail when we let her go. Hopefully she recovered, before some Tiger Shark found her. Actually given the length of the fight I am surprised we saw no sharks.

Win or lose, the fever just gets stronger.