Marlin fishing

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Marlin fishing or billfishing is offshore saltwater game fishing targeting several species of fast-swimming pelagic predatory fish with elongated rostrum collectively known as billfish, which include those from the families Istiophoridae (marlin, spearfish and sailfish) and Xiphiidae (swordfish). It is considered by some fishermen to be a pinnacle of big-game fishing, due to the size, speed and power of the billfish and their relative elusiveness.

Of all the billfish species, 10 of them are of the most interest to blue water anglers: Atlantic and Pacific blue marlin, black marlin, white marlin, striped marlin, Atlantic sailfish, Indo-Pacific sailfish, longbill spearfish, shortbill spearfish and the swordfish.

Fishing for marlin captured the imagination of some sport fishermen in the 1930s, when well-known angler/authors Zane Grey, who fished for black, striped and blue marlin in the Pacific, and Ernest Hemingway, who fished the Florida Keys, Bahamas and Cuba for Atlantic blue marlin and white marlin, wrote extensively about their pursuit and enthused about the sporting qualities of their quarry. These days, a lot of resources are committed to the construction of private and charter billfishing boats to participate in the billfishing tournament circuit. These are expensive purpose-built offshore vessels with powerfully driven deep sea hulls. They are often built to luxury standards and equipped with many technologies to ease the life of the deep sea recreational fisherman, including outriggers, flying bridges and fighting chairs, and state of the art fishfinders and navigation electronics.^[1]