Kona, HI – Capt. Chip Van Mols on the Monkey Biz II has added another Grander to his collections. Capt. Chip weighed a 1,062 Blue Marlin. This is the first Grander we are aware of in the World in 2011. Chip also landed a Grander Blue back in 2010. Oddly enough, he predicted someone in Kona was going to get one soon.
Fish was caught on an Aloha Smash bait. If I remember correctly he usually runs it on his left short. Caught on the 200 Fathom line.
2 Comments
Butterfly
nice fish!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Capt. Chip Van Mols
Hi Hook,
Thanks for the props man! this was my third Kona Grander, my second was 1064 on June 5th,2009 also on the Monkey Biz II and first was 1165 on the Jun Ken Po on Dec.28th, 1994, I was the crew on that one.
In the photo above, the guy on the left is friend Scotty Mezzra, long time Kona resident who used to crew on boats here back in the day and now charters me a handful of days a year when he has family visiting. Our angler was his great nephew ( sisters grand son) Garret (not pictured) who is headed to boot camp next week so family shipped him off to see uncle Scotty and catch a marlin before his hitch in Navy starts! the grey haired guy in the middle is me and the big Kanaka on the right is Capt. Sean “Cobra” Bebeau who was my decky dejour and runs our sister ship the Marlin Grando. Garret is a big strong Kid as well, picked up the technique quick and had the muscle to handle sunset on a 130 so I had great team with me. Nice when all the stars align!
We were fishing the grounds off the Airport that day and had spectated on few marlin caught by other boats in the morning. Then around 2:00 we spectated again as the Maui Jim caught an 821lb blue that came up DOA. We finally got our turn around 3:15 in 200 fathoms off the middle grounds. Yep, Aloha Lures “Smash” on the short corner, first was a big miss, wow, then here she comes, inside out great bite and I was thinking 800 plus right there. She Ran about 200 yards underwater before making half a dozen massive jumps revealing her location then really burned us for another 200 or so underwater. Her first set of jumps she was up over the ledge inside of us and I figured she would run be back out to the deep and we got back to 100 yards out pretty quick, up went the drag and about 15 minutes of tug o war and we had color and then Cobra had the 28ft 750lb leader. she was black backing, swimming fast but Cobra broke her and she tipped on her side just as her back broke the surface next to the boat. I had no question that she had a good shot at making the mark. We got her before she could recover from that first big run and fight time was 20 minutes. At the dock and up on the hoist by 4:00.
Yeehaaa!
aloha,
Chip
Leave a reply