It took 14 men to move it, a police escort to transport it, and ajunkyard scale to weigh the 1,046lb blue marlin that Jacksonville’sConrad Hawkins caught on Saturday.
“It’s mind-boggling how big this fish is,” Hawkins said from hisJacksonville home yesterday. “It really dawns on you when you thinkof the thousands and thousands of boats that have fished for thisthing.
“It was an unbelievable lifetime event.”
Hawkins was fishing aboard the Lucky II, a 51-foot Bertram andPanama City’s Bay Point Invitational Billfish Tournament.
On the second day of the two day tournament Hawkins was trolling aplastic lure some 70 miles off-shore in 660ft of water when the bigmarlin took.
“She literally ate that plug up, then took off aboutthree-quarters of the line on the spool on the first run,” saidHawkins, who estimated he had several thousand feet of 100-pound testAnde line on the Penn 80 big-game reel.
He fought the monster for almost three hours and several times gotthe fish close enough to grab the leader only for it to surge offagain.
Then they got their first sight of her.
“She came up out of the water and we saw the whole bill and herhead, and everybody started screaming,” Hawkins said. “The captainsaid he’d been out there 40 years and never seen a fish that big.”
On the fourth time Hawkins got the fish close to the boat theharness on the fighting chair shattered under the strain.
Seven times the marlin broke free from the mate’s grip on the600lb bs steel leader and powered off on another long run.
At the eighth attempt she came close enough, and three gaffs wereused to bring her to the transom door where six of the crew hauledher on board.
“We’d count to three and move her a few inches at a time,” Hawkinssaid. “When we finally got her in, her head was at the cabin and hertail was still hanging out the door. We had to remove the fightingchair.”
The marlin was an incredible 15ft long and although Hawkins andthe crew have long experience of marlin none could hazard a guess asto its weight. None of them had seen anything like it for size.
Word soon spread and thousands gathered at the dock in Panama Cityas the great fish, with its 5ft wing-span and tail hanging off thestern of the boat, arrived.
“Boats loaded with people started coming out to greet us,helicopters were coming over and TV people were taking pictures — itwas an amazing event,” Hawkins said.
“When we pulled the tarp off at the dock, everybody was in awe,hollering and screaming.”
It took 14 people to suspend the fish from a reinforced tail ropeat the scales, but the weighmaster turned to Hawkins and said, “Myscale won’t weigh it, it only goes to 1,000 pounds.”
Then it was a case of, “Houston, we have a problem.” But then awoman from the IGFA (International Game Fish Association) that keepsworld and State records told Hawkins that the Florida blue marlinrecord was 980 pounds.
All this time the marlin was dripping fluid and losing weight andif Hawkins couldn’t find a sufficient scale, he couldn’t have thepotential record breaker certified.
Then the owner of a local scrap yard said he could help. He hadscales that weighed up to 80,000lbs, and these scales had onlyrecently been certified. So the big fish was hauled into arefrigerated truck and, with a police escort, lights flashing andsirens wailing, transported speedily to Nathan Miller’s scrap yard,13 miles away.
“We didn’t stop for anything — red lights, nothing,” saidHawkins, who rode in the police car.
Now 16 men manhandled the huge fish onto the platform of thedigital scales and with the IGFA official witnessing the event it wasofficially recorded at 1,046lbs, beating both the Florida record andthe Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana record that stood at 1.018lbs.
A tail mount of the fish will be retained by Hawkins and Capt.Anderson’s, a popular restaurant in Panama City, will display thefull mount.
“Obviously, there’s no place I can put it,” Hawkins said. “It wascaught in Panama City, and the captain’s from that area, so I thinkit would be neat to put it there. That’s where it ought to be.”
