From left, Keeth Nelson, Capt. Ryan Fiedorowicz and Mike Tappero with their 422.6-pounder caught on Start Me Up La Dat.

LAHAINA — The Start Me Up La Dat boated a nice blue marlin weighing 422.6 pounds by Keeth Nelson. He was fishing with Capt. Ryan Fiedorowicz and crewman Mike Tappero.

Mike was looking back at the pattern and watched the marlin come in at a 90-degree angle on the long gone position. It grabbed the lure, came right out of the water and ran straight away from the boat about 100 yards. It then made a turn, came greyhounding back at them and disappeared.

Ryan reversed the boat to the last spot he had seen the marlin jump. They didn’t have much of a belly in the line, with the fish pulling the line straight as it headed down. The marlin kept taking the 80-test line, getting them to within 150 yards of pulling all the string off the spool.

Ryan had the boat half-rack reverse for the first ten minutes. Once they got the marlin stopped, Ryan eased up on it but kept the boat in idle reverse for the rest of the fight.

Keeth got into a rhythm and started pumping the fish up, slowly gaining line. About ten minutes later, the marlin started to show some life and started to come up. The fish swam toward the port side, giving Ryan a better angle to reverse on it. 

The marlin made a few runs of about 50 yards straight down. It was give-and-take for Keeth as he cranked on his fish, with the runs getting shorter and shorter each time. Finally, Keeth started to gain steady line, cranking it up from underneath the boat.

The last ten minutes, the marlin was still alive but not too feisty. They finally got its head turned and could tell it was following with the boat. Ryan kept bumping the boat in and out of gear, keeping ahead of the fish as Keeth really started to work the rod.

Mike got the marlin to leader off the starboard corner. Once he had leader, it tried to go under the boat a couple of times. Ryan angled the boat away from the fish to keep it off to the starboard side as Mike pulled it from under the corner.

As Mike got the marlin up, he could see that the hook wasn’t in the fish. The bill was in the bend of the hook, and the only thing that was holding it was the barb of the hook keeping it from sliding off the bill. The point wasn’t even in the fish.

Mike eased the marlin up as quickly as he could without putting any pressure on it. Ryan got it secured before the hook came off to end the 35-minute fight. As soon as Mike grabbed the bill and took pressure of the leader, the hook just slipped right off the bill. This was one lucky catch.