A Whopper of a catch

Mirjam Swanson

GLENDALE -- For the past eight years, John Schachtner had been trying

to catch a blue or black marlin. But to no avail -- at least not until

July 27.

So naturally, it was with that prospective catch in mind that

Schachtner set off from shore in Billfighter that morning, the 31 Bertram

boat owned by his family and used by the Hotel Palmas de Cortez during

the October-through-March fishing season in Cabo San Lucas.

Schachtner, a resident of Sun Valley and the general manager of Hanmar

Corp., his father’s Glendale-based manufacturing company, wanted his

marlin.

He had no idea.

At 9:40 a.m., in the Tuna bite a mile off shore, Schachtner hooked his

black marlin. A very big black marlin. An 820-pound marlin.

“All of a sudden there was this explosion behind the boat,” Schachtner

said. “We really couldn’t tell how big the fish was, with the water and

everything. But we knew it was big.”

So when the ship’s captain Carlos Araujo -- “Paco” to Schachtner and

his other friends on Billfighter -- offered to assist Schachtner in

holding the line, Schachtner declined.

He thought he could handle it.

“Four-and-half hours later I said, ‘Hey, Paco, you still want a shot

at this thing?”’ Schachtner said.

Paco sure did, and so did the boat’s deckhand. So for the next five

hours, the three men rotated, while Hannes Schachtner, John’s father,

provided moral support and helped keep the men holding the fish hydrated.

“He didn’t want to touch the pole ‘cause he didn’t want to be that one

guy who held the pole when the fish broke off,” Schachtner said. “But I

was so glad he was there, it was as much an experience for him as it was

for me.

“You know, when my kid hits a home run, I feel like I did it.”

In this case, Hannes Schachtner saw his son Schachtner go deeper than

Sammy Sosa with this one.

The marlin took out 100 yards of line. It became heavier -- at least

in the mind’s of the men holding it. And it pulled Billfighter three

miles off shore in front of Palmas de Cortez.

Meanwhile, those on shore were intently listening to radio reports of

Schachtner’s catch.

Then, 9 1/2 hours later, the marlin finally came in.

By that time it was “in pretty bad shape,” said Schachtner, usually a

catch-and-release type of fisherman. He added that it after being hooked

for that long, fish don’t usually survive.

But that didn’t diminish this catch.

“It was a real intense moment at the side of the boat,” Schachtner

said.

“When you bring in a fish like that, it’s a moment you can’t really

describe. You realize what you have, how rare it is, how few people have

experienced it. And then you’re in awe of what God creates. Just in awe

-- and really, really happy.”

They got the fish -- even bigger than they thought, actually -- on

deck, and they made their way back to shore, where a large crowd was

waiting to see for themselves what Schachtner had pulled up from the

deep.

“It was amazing,” he said. “Some guy ran into the restaurant and said,

‘There’s an 820-pound marlin on the beach!’ and everybody ran out.”’

The creature was weighed by a IGFA 2000-pound scale. Food Saver units

were brought over to vacuum pack the fish. One quarter of the catch went

to Paco, another quarter to Schachtner and the remainder to the Hotel

Palmas de Cortez.

His marlin is, according to Schachtner, the largest fish caught in

that area in 15 years. But it will take longer than that for them to

forget what Schachtner did last week.

For his part, Schachtner needed three days to recoup: “My hands were

swollen like sausages. I woke up in the middle of a cold sweat and what

happened (in my dream) is that the line had broken, so I woke up

thinking, ‘Oh my God, it was just a dream.’

“It was really such an intense thing.”’