Australian angler Sammy Hitzke has tagged and released what he is calling the biggest marlin of his life - a blue marlin estimated above 800 lb - after a three-hour stand-up fight from a trailer boat off the New South Wales-Queensland border, with mate Shauno on the rod.
The fish ate a 10-inch C4 Tube on the long corner during a slow morning that had already produced a freak shelf-edge barracuda 50 km offshore. After hours of working bird life around the 150-metre line, the pair were second-guessing their plan and considering pushing south to a spot off the Tweed Coast known as the Kink. They turned back to where they had started instead. "We swung the boat round and headed back to where we'd started the day," Hitzke recalls in the voice-over. "We had no idea of knowing just how much this simple decision would change the course of not only our day but probably the rest of our lives."
The bite was unmistakable from the start. "That's a real one," Hitzke says as the reel comes tight. "Strap yourselves in, guys. This one is going to be a cracker." Within minutes the fish jumped clear and revealed its size. The pair were running 37 kg stand-up tackle dialled down to roughly 6 kg of strike drag, throttled deliberately low because of a recent run of stripe marlin on the same gear. "A bit light on him, and if he dives down, we'll jack the drag rod up," Hitzke explained on camera mid-fight. "We've always got 37 kg at our disposal, which means you can get that drag up to 12 or so kilos if you need."
The fish refused to come up. After multiple tag-pole passes, a snapped-off bow run and a bill grab in close, Shauno and Hitzke finally got the leader and a tag in around the three-hour mark. "I think it was over three hours once we tally up all the time," Hitzke said, with Shauno sagging at the corner of the boat. "3 and a half hours ago. Lucky you didn't tell me that, because I reckon I'm starting to sort of cramp up. Worth it."
Reflecting on the fish a few days later, Hitzke set out the size estimate. "It was huge," he said. "We got a short length. It was 3.4 m. Now, if you look at any of the charts, that'll sort of indicate that fish could be anywhere between 750 and maybe 1,000 lb." The crew chose not to weigh the fish. "We decided to let it go, which is something I'm still happy about. We got to see the big girl swim away again, and hopefully someone else will get the privilege of catching something like that again."
He added that experienced billfish skippers had backed the call. "We've spoken to a couple of very, very experienced marlin captains, and they've all turned around and said that fish is over 800 pounds, and you can happily say that all day long," he said. "All I know is it's a fish of a lifetime and truly the biggest marlin I've ever seen on the water."
Hitzke also used the moment to christen his new trailer boat Billy Bell, calling the fish a marker that would be hard to top: "That sets the bar pretty high for the new boat." The tube that did the damage, he confirmed, was a 100 light-tackle hook on a Fatboy Lures C4 - bent, opened up and "absolutely obliterated" - but it held.