Kona, HI – It should come as no surprise that our first Grander of the Year comes from the famed Grander grounds of Kona. Capt. Steve Tarbill on the Kona Concept put Angler Paul Morris on a 1,040 lbs. Blue Marlin.
Congratulations to Capt. Steve and to Paul Morris on a fish of a lifetime! Here is what Capt. Steve had to say.
The fish took a Joe Yee 501 running on the long corner. We never saw the fish, just a massive explosion of white water. The fish never jumped and the first time we saw it was when we were almost at leader. It just ran away from the boat until we had about 200 yards left on our Penn 130. We were backing down as fast as we could go the whole time. We got a lot of line back, it made another long run and then our angler just worked it back to the boat. The fight from beginning to end was about one hour. We had Amilon 130 as our line and Jinkai 600 lb. test as leader. The short fight may have been partly due to our angler who is built like an NFL tight end and very fit. It helped a lot when the fish was close to the boat.