PACIFIC OCEAN — An Oregon man on a tuna charter trip off the Washington coast landed the catch of a lifetime over the weekend.
Tim Durheim, of Prineville, was fishing aboard the F/V Four Sea’Sons on Saturday, Aug. 15, roughly 40 miles off the Washington coast when he hooked up with something he knew wasn’t the albacore tuna they had been trolling for all morning.
“We were trolling and it came up once hit, disappeared, then came back two minutes later and hit again right at the surface and went down,” Durheim said. “Then we proceeded to battle it for a little over an hour.”
The unknown fish — later determined to be a state record striped marlin — made several runs, nearly “spooling” the reel of the 80-pound braided line after biting a black and pink jig.
“I was about 30 minutes in and I still hadn’t seen the fish,” Durheim said, detailing the experience.
After more than an hour of battle, Durheim caught his first glimpse of the larger than 8-foot long billfish as it eventually began to relinquish.
“Then we saw the stripe,” Durheim said. “It never surfaced until we brought it to the boat.”
“151 pounds”
After the initial hookup in the early afternoon, the marlin was landed at about 2 p.m., then transported back to the Ilwaco Marina and offloaded at around 5 p.m., where they were greeted by a growing crowd of curious fishermen and cannery workers.
“151 pounds” flashed on the digital scale at Sportsmen’s Canning as the marlin was hoisted with a forklift before onlookers, many with phones in hand to record the nearly historic catch.
An official from the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed preliminary details about the catch from Durheim and crew as arrangements were made to transport the fish to an official scale and awaiting biologist in Montesano, where the marlin would officially be confirmed as a new state record, eclipsing the previous record striped marlin (134 pounds), caught off Westport by Phil Wolff in September 2005.
Rare catch
Striped marlin, also known as striped swordfish, are a highly migratory fish living at the top of the food chain in the tropical and subtropical regions of the Pacific and Indian oceans, according to NOAA Fisheries. It is a member of a larger family known as billfish, which get their name from their upper jaw that extends to form a spear. Because of their large size, marlin are prized sport fish. Striped marlin also support commercial fisheries in warmer zones of the Pacific Ocean.
Striped marlin are a rare catch in the cooler, Washington waters, typically preferring the warmer, tropical areas (between 68 to 77 degrees), but can tolerate cooler waters better than other marlin as a highly migratory species.
When marlin do appear here, it tends to be in years when El Niño conditions disrupt ocean temperatures and currents. The first recorded catch was in 1997 — a very intense El Niño year like this one — a 104-pounder caught off Grays Harbor. El Niño years also sometimes bring semitropical giant Humboldt squid to Pacific Northwest waters, though none thus far this year.
Striped marlin are smaller than other marlin species, but in their primary habitat they can reach a length of 12 feet and weigh more than 450 pounds, while living up to 20 years.
