La Gomera

After receiving the third invitation from my fishing friend Stefan Mayer-Mendel to join him on his 36 foot Hatteras “Magic” based in La Gomera, I simply couldn’t say no again and decided to fish the waters around the Canary Islands for the first time. 

It didn’t take long to book my ticket. The flight from Frankfurt to Tenerife South took about four and a half hours followed by a 30 minute taxi ride to the ferry port at Los Christianos. The crossing to San Sebastian de las Gomera took almost an hour. Things are much more relaxed there – nothing at all like Tenerife. After checking in at my hotel I set off for the briefing session held at a tapas bar. 

The crew comprised of skipper Andrej Dolinsek, wireman Stefan Mayer-Mendel, his son Lucas and myself as anglers. We decided to take things nice and easy. After breakfast we would put to sea at about 11 a.m. and usually fished well into the evening. 

We caught a total of 5 blue marlins out of 6 strikes and a spearfish on our own lures: a Big Smoker, two on a Striker, a Grander 1238, a Superjet and a Chuggy. We also had a big eye tuna strike and tentative knock-downs from white marlin, none of which took the hook. We estimated the weights of the marlin to be 650, 600, 350, 450 and 300 lbs. 

Here are the exact details: 

Day 1 – 2:3 blue marlin (incl. a double header) 
Day 2 – 1:1 blue marlin
Day 3 – 0:2 big eye tuna and white marlin
Day 4 – 0:1 white marlin
Day 5 – 0:0 raised a white marlin
Day 6 – 0:1 white marlin
Day 7 – 2:2 blue marlin
Day 8 – 0:1 white marlin
Day 9 – 1:1 spearfish

Stephan Kreupl, August 2016