Punta Cana Marlin Fishing With Capt. Edgar

Marlin fishing Punta Cana

Captain Edgar of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, discussed his insane fishing season with 597 released blue marlin!

Jonathan at Captain
Hey everybody. This is Jonathan Newar with Captain experiences, and I'm here with Captain Edgar down in Punta, Cana Dominican Republic. Edgar, how you doing?

Capt. Edgar Doing good, thank you for asking. Man yeah, couldn't be better.

Jonathan at Captain Well yeah, I assume that that answer is coming from the fact that, as you said last week, you're having the most insane season that that you guys have ever had. But, you know, first off, I just want to kind of cover the bases. So, yeah, why don't you tell everybody you know who you are, a little bit about your you guys's operation. How you got into fishing, how you started guiding.

Capt. Edgar
Well, I started fishing when I was a little kid. I was actually born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. I'm your regular kid that fish for crappie, largemouth bass, bluegill, etc. Then we moved here. When I was seven years old, my dad bought a center console, and that was it. Man, I was instantly hooked to deep sea fishing.

Jonathan at Captain
that's amazing. So, yeah, I mean, what was it like? You know, growing up freshwater fishing and then jumping out to blue water. Well,

Capt. Edgar
the first day we went out, we found a whole tree log on the middle of the ocean, just like six miles out, and we caught like 20 plus miles, 20 plus, medium sized Wahoo when I was seven. So anybody can get hooked like that. You know, I've been pretty spoiled here. Yeah, tell you the truth. Yeah,

Jonathan at Captain
definitely. Well, why don't you catch people up to speed on, you know, the current operation? You know what? What sort of vessel are you running? What sort of trips Do you offer? Okay,

Capt. Edgar
well, right now, I'm running a 42 ocean yachts. SS, Super Sport, 2005

two engine, two Caterpillar engine, 3126

right now, what I recommend is either goal all the way all in for the 10 hour blue Martin trip. We got to go to the fads. We got to run like 25 miles towards the fads. If you're not familiar with the fads, not you, but general public. Fast is fish attracting device. It's a man made buoy made by local fishermen, attached to the bottom. They attach, like, how do you say Paul, like a palm tree leaf in English?

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah. I mean, leave all pump. That'd be it, yep, a big, broad leaf. Yeah,

Capt. Edgar
yeah. So they, they tie that and creates like structure in the middle of the ocean. But it's always there. And there's probably like, 80 around. So we use the fish finder now. You know the other boats, of course, are pretty big. Private boats are using Omni sonar. I got my old transducer fish finder to see if you mark fish or bait around that fat and stay there. If not, you go to the other one.

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah, very cool. How deep of water are those fads in normally

Capt. Edgar
from 2500 to 4000 feet, wow.

Jonathan at Captain
Um, very cool. Yeah. I want, want to get into all of that. But, yeah, I mean, the fads are basically like that log that you said you found floating when you were so old, you know? They hold fit, that, that sort of thing.

Capt. Edgar
Yeah, on the marina, the Marina gives the local fishermen the rope. That way they don't bother us. Oh, what do you mean by that? They give them the rope to throw the fat so they don't have to put their own money to do it. Oh, they don't really put their time, because they fish them, but they mainly go for the Mahi. You know, is your easier fish? They don't. They're not really into, well, I guess, you know, they're in a panga thing about just drifting like bait. They probably catch one or two Marlin now and then, but they mostly go for the mahis and the medium, little, little Wahoo there,

Jonathan at Captain
right? Well, yeah. I mean, why don't? Why don't you touch on that? So in addition to, you know, this amazing blue marlin fishery, you also have, you know, wahoo, tuna, Mahi, yeah,

Capt. Edgar
then if you don't, let's say you don't want to do a 10 hour trip because you're with your uncle or your cousin or your kids, I recommend that the smaller one I do a three quarter day. We just go out to the drop and we troll in and out for the Wahoo early morning. Then we'll look for some birds, and then we troll the lobster pots for sales this time of year all the way to march. Then after that, is White Marlin season. Believe it or not, White Marlin, they bite just three miles off the marina. Look for them. So with a six hour, eight hour trip, you'll be catching White Marlin. I mean, you can fight a White Marlin and see the people walking on the beach just two miles off. We have 800 feet, and the whites are there. Wow. Well,

Jonathan at Captain
cool, yeah. Why don't you give people you know, a sense for, you know, geography. So you're fishing out of Punta Cana, the cop Canna Marina down there, you know, eastern shore of Dominican. So, yeah, what you know when you say drop, like, where are you fishing? And you know, all that sort of thing, yeah,

Capt. Edgar
the marinas on the east side of the island side in the peninsula, and it's called the Mona passage is what is between the open water that's between Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. So that's where we fish that stretch. And the fads are on the other side, on the Atlantic, on the 10 hour, the shorter trip. And the White Marlin is on the Marina side. You can, you can say that it's in the Caribbean Sea. Mm, hmm,

Jonathan at Captain
okay, and the fads are north, right? North in the Atlantic, yeah, and it's generally pretty big water, right? Because I've been out of San Juan and, oh yeah, it can get rough. It's for

Capt. Edgar
it's for big boys.

It's not your Costa Rica trip now, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we do have, we do have calm time that, and ironically, is our hurricane season. So from September all the way to mid November, it's flat home, unless it's a hurricane passing by.

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah. Can you give people a sense of like, you know, how the year progresses in terms of seasons? So, you know, January, so let's

Capt. Edgar
say, let's start with the white Marlins season. It starts in March and it ends. It ends because we're still getting whites right now, mixed in with the blues, but it ends between July, mid August, then that's when the blue start in August, and it goes all the way to January, and then around November, all the way to February. We got sales. So it's a year round Bill fishery. Wow, yeah,

Jonathan at Captain
that's pretty unique. Oh yeah, yeah, very cool. And then yeah, I mean, you know, just kind of going, coming full circle. Now, you know, you reached out on our fishing reports last week and said that you guys are having the most insane season ever. What did you mean by that?

Capt. Edgar
By that? Well, let me, let me tell let me just read to you right now. The Marina sent one second. They sent the weekly release report. So the weekly release between December 2 and December 8, 597 blue marlin out of 709 were released. 27 out of 37 White Marlin and 60 out of 83 sailfish in one week between right now, most of the American boats left already. You know, they obviously for the Thanksgiving weekend. They don't come back again till next season, probably around August. So there's an average between 10 boats, 12 boats fishing. So between 1012 boats, between in one week, you got over 600 billfish released the Viking demo the Viking 68 is catching over 20 fish almost daily. Between 15 and 20 Marlin. The record was broken last week by the Trillo, by with 25 releases in one day. I mean, you're having triple headers. I had last week. I had a quad. We hooked all four and caught three. Wow. Yeah, there's a video of my mate on the on the bell and the other one here. Yeah, because they both, both lines go in the opposite direction, yeah.

Jonathan at Captain
I mean, like, what's, what's that like with with four Marlin on at once.

Capt. Edgar
It's pretty insane, because some people say, Oh, you have small fish, yeah, or fish or not, that that fat Blue Marlin is not that big. I mean, you can catch a juvenile Blue Marlin of 5060, pound and also catch a 200 pound male. And once in a while, you're probably out of, let's say, 30 bites. You might have your 400 500 Big Mama, but we catch them here with light tackle. I mean, the heaviest gear you're going to see is 30 pound. So any Marlin with 30 pound would be a pretty insane fight.

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Yeah,

Capt. Edgar
everything's light tackle here.

Jonathan at Captain
So yeah. I mean, they're, they're traditionally kind of more of like that, that White Marlin size, exactly.

Capt. Edgar
But the whites here, you'll be impressed. Of the whites, I mean, I've got 100 plus pound whites. Normally you catch out of 10 bites, you catch one of those because the the females are here breeding. And I know because local fishermen kill them. And you can see the the eggs are huge. And the, I'm talking about 120 130 pound female white Marvin. Some things you don't see up there out of Ocean City. Yeah, you might see your one in a tournament, but these are 100 pound White Marlin. They're the biggest White Marlin you've ever seen.

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah, wow. I mean, that brings up a good point, right? It's like, is conservation, you know? So everybody does, does things differently, you know, especially when you're thinking about, you know, international fisheries. So, you know, what? What do you think the the conservation landscape looks like down there? And,

Capt. Edgar
oh, the marina, 100% you need to release them. They'll kick you out. They'll involve, excuse me, though, they will involve the authorities, the people who kill the the morning. That's why I always like people to go with charters like us that go out of a marina. Yeah, we're more expensive. I'm pretty expensive, but I really do it. You know, there's other charters that will go out of a beach. You know your local tour guide. You pay him 300 bucks. Don't take your excuse me, those are the one that kill them. Because, you know, they don't earn much, and they they want to sell it, yeah? So they kill everything, yeah? But if you're out, if you're going out of cupcon, it's illegal to enter with a dead Marlin on the boat.

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah? That's, that's great. That's, that's how it should be. And then what do you attribute, you know, this season to? You know, is it is it weather? It's every

Capt. Edgar
seven or eight years it happened. Last time it happened, a record was broken. Why? The Blue Bird was 23 and that was in 2016 that's when I started. When I started this. I started in 2017 as a charter, but I moved to Punta Cana in 2016 starting to learn how to fish for the billfish. Because I'll tell you the truth, I fished in the south part of the island, and mainly I just did big yellow fin and Wahoo and Mahi, your occasional Marlin. But really fishing for billfish, I learned everything from here, starting to do it in 2016

Jonathan at Captain
and what? What is it about Bill fishing that you know has you so enthralled

Capt. Edgar
is that that teaser bike, man, that bait and switch, there's nothing like it. The adrenaline may not done everything I've done, uh, bluefin tuna, pi I've done even salmon Alaska. Nothing compares to a blue morning on the teaser.

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah, you know, can you share whatever you're comfortable with? You know, in terms of how you guys set up your spread, what you're like,

Capt. Edgar
I use value, large size, value bait master or whatever, whatever one I could get my hands on, bionic baits, whatever. So it's value with, uh, must that Ultra Demon 08 circle hooks, 80 pound floral, um, mold craft, Lil hooker chuggers on top. I mean, I wish you guys something to show you, but I'm into a house. Hey, yeah, no worries. Not at the boat. We're being cool on the boat. But, um, my laptop's not working, so I'm using my wife's laptop. So I had to be here.

Jonathan at Captain
No worries. Um, how many, how many lines are y'all typically fishing, I

Capt. Edgar
like to have one short, two longs, and then two pitch spade waiting. I have one big, uh, 50 Tiger, just in case, for Big Mama with a big mullet or extra large size horse value for pitch for a big one, and then a regular pitch for a smaller fish on a 30,

Jonathan at Captain
yeah, yeah. I mean, that's got to be the best. The teaser bites, awesome. But like, if, when you pitch into to a big

Capt. Edgar
pitch, like, yeah. I mean, those fish are so aggressive that they'll eat the valley the next, next to the boat, like, you can touch

Jonathan at Captain
them. Sweet. That's awesome. Do you have any, do you like, throw any dredges out there? Anything like, yeah, yeah. I'm proud

Capt. Edgar
to say I'm probably the only charter that can that. I mean, charter, affordable, charter that uses two dredges. You know, real good teasers. All that. Mainly, my favorite teasers are consisted of tuna flaps, mud flaps, yeah, totally, both of them, one I do it single mud flaps, and the other one with mixed in with a squid and mud flaps,

Jonathan at Captain
gotcha, makes sense.

And then, I mean, what are you thinking about, like the Omni sonar, and how that sort of changed the game

Capt. Edgar
I fish with, for an example, with Pete Manuel and delta Don I fish with them. It's pretty cool. It's like a video game, right, right? I mean, that big adrenaline rush when you don't have an omni sonar, when all of a sudden you see that Marlin, it kind of goes away because you're expecting the bite. But it's still pretty awesome. It's still pretty cool, but it takes a little bit away of that shouting, of the cursing, and, you know, takes a little bit

Jonathan at Captain
away, right, right? And it's like, there he is, you know, he's in the spread. He's going from one to

Capt. Edgar
the next 8080, feet, you know, yeah, expecting, Yep, yeah. But it's still pretty cool. I mean, if you can afford it, yeah, buy it definitely, yeah. I can't, yeah,

Jonathan at Captain
yeah. I got it. You got to run a couple more charters here. But what, what do you think about, you know, the fads too, right? You know, because they're, you know, sort of like an artificial piece of, well,

Capt. Edgar
they've been here since, I don't know, since when, when I started a kid, when I said, when I started, my dad bought a center console, not 23 foot Aqua sport. There were, there were already fads out there when I was seven years old. And I was born in 87 so early 90s, you still, you had the fads here. So by local fishermen, yes, interesting.

Jonathan at Captain
And how do they ensure, and you know, those sorts of depths, that that they stay put.

Capt. Edgar
Oh, they have these old, how you say this in English, like the old maps where you buy now, and in Garmin avionics, that you see the contours and everything, you can actually buy it. So they have it. And they use, I remember when I was a kid, they use this mountain when it, when it, when this corner of the mountain gets here, with this corner of the mountain, that's where it's it drops to 1000 feet. That's how they usually they use, like, points and land.

Jonathan at Captain
Gotcha. Okay, so, so where they're dropping the fads, it's really not as deep, because

Capt. Edgar
they don't have GPS, none of that, yeah, but

Jonathan at Captain
so they're, they're dropping it where they know it's, it's shallower water.

Capt. Edgar
Now they know they have, they have the map, the contour map, and a piece of paper like. A like a sheet. They know the depth. They know it's 3000 feet there. And they are, if they know, if it says it's 3000 feet there, they always put, like 1000 feet more. So the fat can move. So it's not a constant, okay, pressure. So it moves, I say like a mile radius. If the current is southwest, it moves a mile that way, if it's a current northeast and moves a mile that way. Okay,

Jonathan at Captain
so, yeah, I mean, they are, you know, relatively stationary. They're not, you know, frequently snapping and just drifting off to, who knows, oh,

Capt. Edgar
their life expectancy is between six months to one year. They don't last long. And then, and then, what happens to them? They throw another one. Yeah, okay, yeah, you throw another one in, yeah. Super interesting here. Here, they're not like, Costa Rica, Costa Rica, they're underwater with, you know, seven, $8,000 fad underwater. You look for them with the sonar. Here, it's just a buoy, and if it goes away, they throw it back in. It's just like, probably, like a they probably spend 200 $300 on the Fed. Yeah, makes sense.

Jonathan at Captain
Very cool. And, yeah. I mean, why don't you, you know, share on a couple of the days that you guys have been recently having?

Capt. Edgar
Well, I started fishing for blues. Really started catching them in August, and I've already released since two days ago, 104 Wow, blues. But the bite really turned on was November, starting November. The first Grand Slam I did was November 1. And the last one was two days ago, three days ago. And after I talked to you, we did another one. Nice. So in 3035, days, we've done four grand slams.

Jonathan at Captain
And by that you mean Blue Marlin, White Marlin, sailfish, right? Yeah, I

Capt. Edgar
did one with a spear fish. Oh, cool. We get Spearfish mixed in also with the small blues and whites. Yeah, that's awesome. Atlantic, Atlantic long Bill Spearfish. Just so they know, because the short bill is in the Pacific, right?

Jonathan at Captain
Yep, you know. And I mean, you target them, just as you would other billfish, yeah,

Capt. Edgar
yeah, because we're using the same large side valley here, the same light tackle, same thing. Yeah, that's and also, the feathers are full of mahis, so we're, believe it or not, we take the bait out of a Mahi when we see them. We don't catch them because we want to. We don't want to. We don't want to ruin the bait with Mahi. We want to. We want the blues. I gotcha, yeah, some of my clients say, just come for that, you know. So we don't. We try not to. Since you're having 1012, bolts around you, you don't want to waste time with mines.

Jonathan at Captain
Yeah, yeah. And so are most clients, you know, pretty serious anglers, you know, and they're pretty focused on Bill fish.

Capt. Edgar
I have a lot of returning clients are pretty, pretty serious. Yeah, of course, you get your normal tourist. You don't want to take anything away from them, your normal Wisconsin guy, walleye fisherman from Lake Erie. But, you know, they fish good too. You know, they like this, yeah, of course, there's also really serious fishermen here, yeah, to come that come here,

Jonathan at Captain
what's, what's it like when you put somebody on their first billfish, their first blue marlin? I

Capt. Edgar
think that's one of the highlight apart from the fishing itself, that's also one of my highlights of what I do, yeah, seeing them, you know, accomplish that. It's pretty cool.

Jonathan at Captain
YEAH? I Yeah. I caught my first one this summer out of, out of San Juan. And, yeah, really, it was the most electric, you know, thing of all time. It's just so exciting. Well,

Capt. Edgar
I mean, it's almost the same waters for some reason here. It's just, I mean, the Puerto Ricans come here,

Jonathan at Captain
yeah, oh no, definitely, yeah. There's plenty. Yeah. We have a lot of

Capt. Edgar
boats right now out of Puerto Rico fishing. The last been doing a lot of good numbers the fresh air. Dona Lucy, I don't know if you heard of them. I have, yeah, yeah, it's a really big team. They're from Puerto Rico too. They're really good fishermen. I mean, tell the truth, they were the first we really started this light tackle billfish thing was Puerto Ricans.

Jonathan at Captain
We fished IBT 71 this summer. And yeah, it was a blast. It was, it was right after that hurricane, so I think, oh, yeah, you know, thrown out of

Capt. Edgar
Yeah. I mean, the fishing wasn't great, I heard, but you still got some, yeah,

Jonathan at Captain
exactly, but, but yeah, they say it's the longest consistently running Bill fish tournament in the world, right? I think so, it was 72nd or something like that. Yeah, 70/71 I think, yeah, there you go. Yep, yeah. Um, super cool. I mean, how would you compare the two fisheries? Pretty similar. No,

Capt. Edgar
here is a lot better,

a lot better, and they know it. That's why they come here. Yeah. And why do you can attribute that? Yeah, for some reason, I don't know why it's it's just a place because they tried the feds, Puerto Rico did, the government actually paid for it, and they did the feds. But they tell me they really didn't work. For some reason, they were here,

Jonathan at Captain
yeah, yeah. Super interesting.

Capt. Edgar
Yeah, even though it's from the inlet from capcana to Mayaguez is like 67 miles, that's it. Super cool.

Jonathan at Captain
Crazy. Well, awesome. I mean, what's what's ahead for you? What do you have going on from here?

Capt. Edgar
Mean, I've been posting a lot of videos. A lot of my old clients are seeing this. I'm back on the boat. I stopped fishing for a while. Was having some health issues. Oh, sorry, no, it's okay. But now I'm back on the boat, and they're pretty excited, and I'm pretty, pretty booked up. Sweet,

Jonathan at Captain
is it one of those things where, yeah, people are just, you know, booking flights and heading down as quick as they can.

Capt. Edgar
Yep, I have a client from New York. You know who he is. He's coming again. He probably comes three four times a year. Fishes four straight, full days every time he comes. Awesome. He caught, he already caught with me, close to 40 Blue Marlin.

Jonathan at Captain
Wow. I mean, that's, that's why you do it. You know those numbers. Well, cool. Edgar. Any anything else you have to share with folks, anything you want to get off your chest? Get off

Capt. Edgar
your chest, um, try it. Come and catch your first Marlin. They're writing. I mean, it's fishing. I can never guarantee anything like, Oh, you're gonna catch a Marlin, for sure, but I can guarantee you at least a 90% you're gonna catch a blue marlin. That's pretty high. That's that, that 10% fishing bad luck, you know, that you might have. But, I mean, I don't think there's a place in the world the second place that it's close to us, it's Costa Rica. I mean, for blues, because Costa Rica was selfish, insane. But with blues, Costa Rica is pretty close, but you gotta go 100 miles out to those feds. Here's just 25 you don't have to spend those big bucks on an overnight trip. Here you you can do it in 10 hours, eight hours. And

Jonathan at Captain
so you put that 90 90% on a on a 10 hour trip, or, you know, multi day, or what 10 hour trip? That's crazy, yeah. I

Capt. Edgar
mean, probably the last time I didn't get a blue marlin this season was in September that the kernel was bad, and probably it went two times I didn't catch a Blue Island. Then all the trips, probably 4050, trips, from September to here, I've caught a blue morning every time, at least one. Wow. Yeah,

Jonathan at Captain
that's awesome. Well, cool, yeah, yeah, you know. Thanks. Thanks a lot for for setting aside the time. I mean, this has been great. You know, it's super exciting what you guys are up to down there. And yeah, hope you know you guys continue all the success. I

Capt. Edgar
mean, they're still biting. Yeah.