Over our last 3 trips to the Wanganella banks we have been targeting marlin on stick baits and with the large body of fish its enabled us to try different things and actually have multiple attempts at fish with different rigs/set ups!
First up just remember we are on a large boat with 0 to no ability to chase these fish so most of the fight we just have to fight them from a stationary boat!!!!
On our first trip we tried single and treble hooks soon finding that the hook up rate was much higher on treble hooks
when we first tried we used the normal leader we would use for kingfish which was 4-5m of 170lb casting leader... this was not long enough for the way would have to fight these fish off a large boat(would be fine on trailer boat) and also the bill was wearing through the 170 very fast!
We tried both 200-300lb bite leaders and found the 300lb was sweet with fish still happily eating the lures but strong enough that when leadering the fish we could really hold onto it
We then ran into capacity issues as with 200m spools was just not enough when we couldnt chase the fish and there is no way of stopping a 100kg+ marlin while its jumping away!!
Now we use Stella 20000 and daiwa 8000 size reels
on our second trip we landed one fish and on our last trip we landed 5 fish ranging between 100-140kg!!!
Rod wise we have been fishing
Carpenter TBL 80/40
and Carpenter Monster hunter 79 and 80
all 3 rods have been awesome
We did try out Carpenter BLC range at the beginning but we felt we needed a little more power in the upper section of the rod as most of the fight is at a higher angle
Our set up now is the following:
400m of pe8 casting GT plus
FG or PR onto 5-6m of 170lb shockleader to a heavy swivel
then 1.5m of 300lb tied to another swivel which is then attached to the stickbait via split ring
only trouble with this very long leader is casting it but we just make sure we dont over power the cast we we havnt had many issues on the last trip..
(if you try to cast to hard the odd wind knot or guide wrap can be a problem)
For hooks we have been using the following:
Owner st-66 4/0 and 5/0
Owner st-76 5/0
BKK GT Rex 5/0 6/0
All of the above have been barb less with but we have been favoring the BKK GT REX with there interned points as once the fish is on they didnt seem to fall off like on the ST-76