Everything was lovely in my world today, lots of dolphin, and some good marlin action.

My group was in to the whole marlin thing, but requested enough fish for dinner. Of course, it wasn't till later that they informed me that there were 33 people staying in the house. Anyway, I headed her south this morning, and found a limit of dolphin in 20 fathoms. No problem. I cruised on out to the deep to look for some billfish action, and the grass was so bad that I was over 350 fathoms before I found a clear spot to fish. We started trolling down the beach, after hearing of a few bites in shallower, I knew that I just had to suck it up and deal with the grass. It was just as I expected, but it wasn't long before a 400 pound blue marlin made a stab at the right short rigger, but right after the strike the bait got grassed up. The fish fell back to my right long rigger, and made a swipe at that. I was trying to skip the bait over wadds of grass, but that bait caught grass too. Next, he fell in behind my short shotgun bait, which is on a TLD 25. Hooked up. This fish had it together. He jumped three times at first, and a half hour into the fight made another jump, but after that he stayed down about 50 feet, and paddled to the northeast. I was in reverse for 4 ½ miles before we finally got the leader. My angler did a great job. By the time we finished up with him, the bite had slowed up some, but we did have a white marlin follow a teaser all the way up beside the boat before Ben got a bait to him. We had him on for a few<BR>minutes, but he pulled off. Great day!<sc