A Prineville, Oregon, man got the thrill of a lifetime Saturday, Aug. 15, out in the deep blue sea about 40 miles west of Ilwaco when he pulled in a 151-pound striped marlin.
Tim Durheim was fishing for albacore tuna aboard the Ilwaco charter boat Four Sea’sons when the likely Washington state-record eight-and-a-half-foot marlin struck. The current state record is 134 pounds, a fish caught in 2005.
The marlin is being taken to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Montesano field office for confirmation with a marine biologist and an official scale.
Striped marlin are considered exceptional, “warm-water vagrant” anomalies in Washington’s frigid North Pacific waters.
When they do appear, it has sometimes been in years when El Niño conditions upset ocean temperatures and currents. The first recorded catch was in 1997 — a very strong El Niño year — a 104-pounder caught off Grays Harbor.
