After enumerable telephone calls and insistent assurances by Reel Danger Travel's booking agent Taylor Kelley, St. Louis residents Alan and Pam Schuchardt and Patrick and Kathy Hutsler booked a trip to hurricane ravaged Cabo San Lucas. Cabo San Lucas had been inundated with some 24 inches of rain and gusting winds reaching 125 MPH over a four-day period.

"Taylor was very persuasive!" said Alan as he sipped yet another Margarita at the popular Baja Cantina, which faces the snug, and secure Baja California harbor. "He said the airport was open, the highway to Cabo San Lucas was safe and the hotel Hacienda Beach Resort was open for business as usual." Patrick laughed aloud at that statement. "Alan talked us into it.

I don't think it would have made any difference to Alan if the roads were horrible. Alan just wanted to attend Sammy Hagar's birthday party." And maybe try a little deep-sea fishing! The two couples were eager to experience their first foray onto the Mar de Cortés, Baja California's now famous fishery, and were at "A" dock at 0700 hours.

Waiting for them was Reel Danger's REEL TEQUILA, a 33' Rampage manufactured in Florida. Capitán Ramón had the engines warmed, impatient, the fishing gear stowed. The deck hand Manuel, helped the ladies aboard. Within minutes they had exited the harbor, motored past Lover's Beach, skirted the famous Arch, and headed to sea bearing north by northeast. It didn't take long for things to start happening. "Look at the whale!" someone shouted.

Ramón flashed a grin. It wasn't a whale but something was certainly going on several hundred yards ahead. The ascending sun painted the Mar de Cortés in sparkling multicolored hues of blue and green. And she was as flat as glass, resting, perhaps, after the previous week's tumultuous pounding by hurricane Julieta. As they drew closer to the boiling sea they were informed that porpoise were corralling baitfish and tuna were feeding voraciously below them. "Can we catch some tunas?" someone asked and received the standard Mexican reply, "No problema." Just watching the porpoise perform was, in itself, worth the price of a day cruise Manuel had the outriggers baited and trolling as REEL TEQUJILA eased her way through the feeding frenzy.

The metallic clack from one of the outriggers certainly got everyone's attention. One's first reaction is that something has gone bad but immediately realized that something had gone good. This time, though, the tuna bait had been hit and discarded. Ramón smiled. It was going to be a good day. Like all seasoned captains in Cabo San Lucas, he could feel it in his bones. REEL TEQUILA was approaching San José Canyon now and Ramón was certain that these virgin fishermen were about to experience the thrill of their landlocked lives. As he adjusted his course it struck. "Hookup!" shouted Manuel. The corner starboard line was indeed as taut as a bowstring, the line pulling the black and purple lure.

Manuel waited patiently. When confident that the fish had taken the lure, he set the hook, turned, handed the rod and reel to Alan. Patrick glanced at his watch. It was exactly 0800 hours. The largest fish Alan had ever caught was a 9-1/2 pound Large Mouth Bass. When he had the rod well in hand he lifted the tip slightly to get a feel for the equipment and exclaimed "Holy shit!" And suddenly it dawned on him that as he continued to reel, the line continued to dash from the Penn International 80-wide.

Whatever was on the other end of the line was very, very big. Ramón, had anyone noticed, was showing signs of anxiety. He was maneuvering the boat to give the angler all the help he could but the angler was not recapturing any of the line. Soon, very soon, the 1000 feet of monofilament line would be spooled. It was then that the fish decided to rest. "Reel, amigo, reel!" he shouted. And Alan reeled. Nearly an hour passed and then they saw it. A huge Marlin, just below the surface of the sea, a shadowy creature of undetermined size and weight. Alan turned to Patrick, "Take this, I'm beat." Patrick gathered the rod and reel into his arms and commenced the lift-up and reel-down motion with which standing anglers are so familiar. He had never felt anything so heavy in his life. And this thing was alive. Then came the shock. The line was once again escaping from the real. Señor Marlin was making another run. Ramón realized that this was no ordinary Marlin. He also realized that there was, again, every possibility of being spooled. He was relying on his many years of experience to attempt to avoid the inevitable. Finally, the fish tired and the line commenced to rewind onto the reel. An hour passed and Patrick returned the rod and reel to Alan. Another hour passed. They were making progress. Only a third of the line remained in the sea. Alan returned the gear to Patrick. Both anglers were now numb with exhaustion. It was no longer any fun. "There he eeze!" shouted Manuel. Ramón realized that the two gringos were just about spent. He yelled something in machine-gun Spanish and Manuel rushed to the gunnel and started hand-lining the behemoth Marlin toward the stern. And then Ramón realized that there was yet another possible problem. If the Marlin died while off the stern there would be hell to pay getting him aboard. Manuel was hand lining feverishly, glistening with perspiration. They were making progress. And then the Marlin expired.

It took them 45 minutes to wrestle the Blue to the door and haul him half of him inside. Ramón changed course and headed for the commercial weighing dock. There, people waited in disbelief. Was it a grander? They weighed three times. Each reading differing from the last. They finally settled on 800 pounds, the largest bill weighed so far this season, although most people thought it weighed more. The experts will figure it out; the length of the fish was 172" and its girth slightly over 30". After the Blue was cut up and donated to local Mexicans, the two anglers and their wives headed for hotel Hacienda. They wanted to be well rested in order to thoroughly enjoy what they had traveled so far to hear in the first place - the Sammy Hager Concert. Thanks to reeldanger.com they would return to St. Louis with memories to last them a lifetime.