The Art of Pitch Baiting. No method of big game fishing demands more performance or provides more excitement. And no other group of professionals do it better than the crew of the 80′ Merritt boat “Reel Tight”. This video (above) shows the boys, and girl, in typical smooth perfection as they raise a blue marlin, tease him to the boat, and switch him over to the hook bait. In this case, an artificial lure lovingly referred to as the “Ting um”.

The North Drop in the British Virgin Islands gives up another cover photo. This months shot came while I was riding along on a familiar platform, the 58′ Revenge Custom Yacht. It’s kinda rare that I get to film a lure caught fish any more with most every team pitch baiting every opportunity. So I really welcomed this bite and was delighted that it stayed on and then jumped in range of my camera. Many thanks to Sam and Jon for the ride, and always grateful to Mike, Dean, and Ryan for letting me run around their office and do my thing. The only bad part of this cover photo is that when this magazine issue was going to print, someone dropped the ball and put the wrong photo credit on the title page. So this lovely creature is misidentified as a Black Marlin and the photo is credited to some other chap.

Here is a multi media project I put together from 2009 Summer fishing action in St. Thomas aboard the boat Revenge. I rode along with Mike, Dean, and Ryan a few days and compiled this material into this short movie. It has some great billfish shots and jumping blue marlin action. And it shows a well oiled crew of fantastic fisherman doing their thing. It’s 4 minutes long and has an audio track. The content is a mixture of high res still frames from a Canon MKIII and some short video clips from a Canon MKII5D.

The November issue of Marlin Mag is out and it’s a nice one. This small St. Thomas fish ate a circle hook pitch Bonita behind the Revenge and jumped all over the ocean. This was the last day of a long stretch for Sam, Jon, and the boys during the August moon. And what a stretch it was, having just won the Boy Scout Tournament for best boat and best angler days before. Thank you for another great day on the North Drop.