Its all about sailfish business when I joined a fishing trip to San Vicente, Cagayan. The group composed of seven anglers have never had the experience of landing a sail except one (that’s me) but motivated by thoughts of the saying “you can’t be called professional angler until you have caught a sailfish” methodically brought with them the best of their fishing equipment.

At the end of first day fishing, angler Pito Medina with his buddy Nikki Devilla luckily landed two sails each weighing 28 & 38 kgs respectively aside from two wahoos and another two dorados of average 10 kgs apiece caught by Nikki. It was a delighting sight for me to have witnessed and hear first hand the tales of an angler, having in mind that he now belongs to the elite sailfish club of professional anglers, flaunting the way he successfully fought the sail in just a few minutes after long hours of waiting for the strike. As it was his wont, every fishing day he wakes up 3:00 a.m. and depart at around 4:00 a.m. for a whole day in his boat under scorching heat of the sun while at all times keeping alert on his reel’s alarm signaling the strike. I reckoned that was no fun but here’s a living proof, the angler was really overjoyed of his sail catch as in he was on top of the world. It probably justified that fishing is indeed fun!

The distinction between an angler and a fisherman is never confined on methods of catching i.e. an angler uses hook & line and at times catch & release while fisherman uses all means such as nets and varied fishing paraphernalia to catch fish dead or alive, rather the big difference lies in the produce. An angler who is unable to take home a catch will simply find it “part of the game” but a fisherman who goes home without catch will undoubtedly lament over nil family subsistence.

In game fishing the most tricky is hooking sailfish into submission. You won’t catch one by merely letting your bait trolled and reeled-in upon strike as you would normally do. For sails you will have to find ways to make sure the hook is embedded after a strike. And the usual practice is the “drop back” which is done by releasing the line instantaneously after a detected sail bite. A sailfish has the distinction of “hard-to-catch fish” but not to Pito Medina. His prized-catch further lured us to hopeful fishing days where anglers in the strict sense of the word shall fish to conserve more marine-life species down unto the unfathomable seabed for future generations to likewise enjoy.

Happy fishing & God bless you all!