Angler Tim Durheim was fishing with a bunch of law enforcement buddies aboard the “F/V Four Sea’Sons” on Aug. 15 when they landed a remarkable marlin — one that will likely break a 21-year-old record. Running the 50-foot charter boat were two captains, Capt. Robbie Norman and Capt. Danny Schenk, both from the town of Ilwaco, Washington.
“We’d had a good morning trolling lures, with a couple of bluefin tuna and over a dozen albacore,” says Schenk, 59. “It was almost 1 p.m. when I saw a fish jump, and I said to Robbie I thought it might have been a marlin. They’re very rare in our waters, and we were 45 miles offshore in 4,000 feet of water.
“I got on the radio and told a captain in another boat that I saw a marlin jump. Then I said, ‘Wait, we got that sucker hooked. It’s on.’”
Schenk saw the fish jump twice, the second time was a grayhounding series of leaps. Meanwhile, the hooked fish screamed off 80-pound test braided line from a Shimano Tekota reel fitted to a comparatively light-action rod intended to catch fish a fraction of the size of a fast and far-running marlin.
“It almost got line into our prop and rudder, and the fish almost spooled our angler’s reel on the first run,” Capt. Norman says. “I told Danny to put the boat in reverse to chase it. We must have backed down 10 miles following the fish so it wouldn’t take all the line off the reel.”
The fish fought deep, and the anglers didn’t know for sure it was a striped marlin until they got it close to the boat. For a while the fish had the line wrapped around its tail, says Norman, which made fighting it a real grind for angler Durheim.
“The line finally came off its tail, and the fish made another blistering run,” says Norman. “The reel was so hot as it ripped line off the Tekota that we almost poured water on it to cool it down.”
But the reel had just been serviced, and it performed perfectly. Durheim battled the marlin for another 45 minutes and finally drew it close for Norman to gaff.
Capt. Schenk helped Norman haul the hefty striped marlin into their boat.
“We all knew what a rare and big catch that striped marlin was off Washington and everyone was just ecstatic,” Schenk says. “The adrenaline was pumping and everyone was euphoric.”
With a three-hour run back to shore, they headed east for Ilwaco Marina, packing Durheim’s rare marlin in ice the meantime.
The 9-foot-long fish officially weighed 151 pounds on certified scales at Sportsmen’s Canning. Schenk says dozens of people who heard about the unusual catch were there to see it as they got to the marina.
“Fisheries biologists and personnel were there from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to inspect the marlin for positive identification,” says Schenk.
Paperwork has been filed with the state for Durheim’s catch to become the next Washington state record for striped marlin. His 151-pound billfish easily tops the current striped marlin record of 134 pounds caught in 2005 by angler Phil Wolff out of Westport, Washington.
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The marlin was processed for food and the anglers took its meat back home with them to Oregon.
“I never heard any of the anglers talk about having a replica mount made of that fish,” says Norman. “But I’m having a mount made, putting it in my living room. There have only been a very few billfish ever caught off Washington, and that’s a memory I want to be able to look back at for a long time.”
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