"Here are the still
pictures that we have of the 600 pound Black Marlin that Stephen
caught on Thursday, July 7th. What you don't see is what happened
during the fight, which we have on video tape of this Marlin
attacking the boat and striking Stephen in the head causing four
fractures to his left cheek and the force split the back of his
throat open. We were 30 miles offshore when this happened and it
took over 2 hours to get back in and Tropic Star had a plane
standing by to take us to Panama City to the Hospital. He was in a
lot of pain and bleeding quite a bit but we got him there as fast as
we could and into x-rays.
They kept him overnight and we left
for home Friday morning and took him directly to our hospital where they checked
him out and send us over to Atlanta Plastic Surgery. The surgeon examined
Stephen and felt that right now we should wait for a week and bring him back
after the swelling goes down but feels that him may not require any surgery on
this injury. If you check picture 481, this jump was probably 30-40 yards away
from the boat and the fish turned to the left during the jump. The next 1 to 1
1/2 seconds it launched itself directly at me sitting on the starboard edge of
the boat and then turned slightly to port, hitting its' chest (if it had one)
directly in the middle of the back edge, bounced up and moved it's head left to
right and struck Stephen on his face with its' bill, knocking him out of the
chair.
We have the entire thing on video
tape which I plan on sending to everyone, at least the last several seconds so
you can all see how much in control we were and how quickly that changed.
Bob
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Here are the pictures that I have taken off of the video footage. Look at them
in ascending order, number 18, 23, 24 etc., then 10-13. This represents only
about 3 to 3 1/2 seconds based on the video time stamp in total and some of you
will be traveling to fish again with me at Tropic Star Lodge or elsewhere for
Marlin and I want to make sure that you know how quickly it can change.
Bob
