For my second trip to Mauritius it was round 2 at sea on the Marantha hoping to have the same luck as last time when we caught a sailfish- maybe even a marlin this time!
We set off from Le Mourne at 7am for a 6hr trip, luckily the cyclone had moved away from Mauritius so the weather was looking good. Shortly in to the trip we spotted a large group if spinner dolphins which we look as a sign of good luck. Less than an hour later and the captain and French spotted three sail fish to the side of the boat, one came very close but sadly was not interested in our lures on this occasion!
A short while later there was lots of bird activity just over the water- a good sign that bait fish were being chased to the surface by larger fish feeding. So we headed towards the birds and off shot one of the rods, after a short time we reeled in a bonito and kept it for bait. 20 mins later off went 2 rods together and again we reeled in 2 nice bonitos. The lads took in 4 of the rods leaving 3 rods, 2with live bait and 1 with a lure. After a short time the middle rod screamed off!! French jumped on the rod and the line was peeling off 100mph! The lads shouted marlin and it was clear a strong fish had taken our bonito, after about a minute the marlin jumped about 60mtrs from the boat. Unfortunately the luck was not with us and the line went slack, the marlin was gone but when we reeled in the bonito we could see that it was not attached to the hook, the marlin had the bonito in its mouth and ran-it was just bad luck!
The crew tried their hardest to get us on the fish after the lost marlin, we put our last2 bonito out- 1 set with a weight to pick up fish feeding on the bottom and one left out on the outrigger. After an hour we reeled in the bonito to find a half eaten fish, probably from a shark and the fish on the bottom was untouched.
For the rest of the day we enjoyed the trolling but there was to be no more action on the sea that day.
Overall another great experience with Marantha and would highly recommend anyone fishing Mauritius, just a shame the luck was not with us that day.
All the best to the crew until next time
Rob

This time the Blue Marlin was lucky, but I knew before that there are not so many fish around in september. The crew tried everything to get to the fish. We managed to catch some Bonitos and I am sure the bigger fish will follow next time.

We had a great afternoon onboard and I really can recommend fishing with Maranatha Sport Fishing!

You can have good days and bad days. But when i asked about the latest catch which was worth to mention he had the search back for 12 days. 12 days is equal to +/- 15 disappointing fishing trips.

Mauritius contain about 30 (or even more?) fishing boats which are average 8 hours a day, 5 days a week booked while enjoying a 9 months lasting fishing season. In combination with not releasing small fishes it seems to cause overfishing.

About the crew and equipment; boat is too big and loudly to go after tuna by following the birds. Only thing what happens is that the tuna’s have been pushed away.
Furthermore it would have been nice if dead bait (for shark or barracuda) or non-trolling rods (when floating next to tuna’s) were available to have some variation instead of 5 hours non-stop trolling.