Some years ago, the Austrian fellow Gerhard Hollaus discovered that the Ghanaian waters around Takoradi on the Gold Coast held enourmous numbers of blue marlin.
He immediately founded the
"Captain Hooks Fishing Club and Restaurant".
He has since then caught more than 150 marlin every year in less than 100 days of fishing with only one boat.
After a seven-hour flight and one night in Accra, Gerhard picked us up to bring us to Takoradi. When he showed me pictures of his last catches of two big marlin of 821 and 655 lbs., I really got nervous.
The next morning we headed out on the comfortable 28-feet yacht. Shortly after we started fishing we had the first strike and after 40 minutes I had landed the first blue marlin of 330 lbs. Two hours later, I caught the smallest fish of the trip with 221 lbs. On the first day, I had caught 2 blues out of 5 strikes in 11 hours. 4-6 strikes per day are very usual here.
The next three days were very similar. The second day, I caught a marlin of 390 lbs., the third day, two more fish of 366 and 352 lbs., and on day four, a marlin of 440 lbs.
On day 5, I had a double strike of two big marlins. After a couple of missed strikes and a lost big marlin after a 40- minutes fight we replaced our lures by natural bait. Shortly after we put the two skip baits into the water, a huge dorsal fin appeared 150 m behind the boat. First I thought of a whale but seconds later the skipper yelled „Marlin, marlin, over 1,000 pounds". As he turned the boat, I ran down from the flybridge to my reel and the baitfish was already knocked out of the clip. I let her time to eat and when I set the hook, the marlin showed her huge head and then ran fast away from the boat. When I asked my deckie to reel in, the second bait went off, too. I first thought that was the same fish but then saw two different fish jumping behind the boat. Both fish took about 700 yards of line. I started fighting one fish and left the other rod in the rodholder. I was wery excited and really happy that I had come to Captain Hooks to Ghana. After a 20-minutes fight I had gained 300 yards of line back but had to change the rod as the smaller marlin came much closer. I fought him as fast as possible, and after 40 minutes we could gaff a wonderful blue marlin of 554 lbs. Exactly in that moment, the other much bigger marlin pulled the hook and the rod tip went back. What a pity!
After having beaten the 500-pound mark, I went very relaxed into the last day of fishing and again caught a marlin of 378 lbs. Every evening, there was a big party when we came into the harbour with marlin on board. The locals were looking forward to lovely marlinsteaks and helped us carry and weigh our marlin. I also was amazed how well the Captain Hooks Fishing Club was equipped: It has a nice weighing-station, a scoarebord and even a digital scale for up to 1,000 kilos. The tackle is also perfect.
For further information and bookings, please contact
Heiko Steinmetz
Tel. 0049-6227/819451 (Germany)
See you soon and regards,
Heiko Steinmetz