Stories

Captain Brad Philipps was at the top of his game. It was February 2020 and the world’s most productive charter fishing captain was approaching a stunning 40K career billfish releases. Trying to get a last minute booking on his Decisive during peak season was like getting a same day dinner reservation at Yountville, California’s French Laundry…Good luck! If the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) could give out Michelin stars for excellence, Philipps would have double digits.

Then, the world came to a stand still. A virulent, deadly entity began to circumnavigate the globe, shutting down industries and governments as quickly and easily as one flips off a light switch. Advanced nations convulsed with indecision on how to address the plague without killing economies. Other nations, like Guatemala, slammed closed like clams.

Captain Brad Philipps had a decision to make. Guatemala was shuttering schools and businesses and getting out of the country was approaching impossible. With a high end sport-fisher berthed in Puerto Quetzal and properties in Antigua and Ixtapa, he might have stayed to weather-out the COVID pandemic, if he was single. But with two children in grade school, his business in Guatemala would have to wait. And so would his quest to reach 40K billfish releases. Philipps, his wife Cindy, and their two children, literally caught the last flight out of Guatemala City to South Africa where he would enroll his kids in private school and retrench in a new business venture, a safari lodge in the Kruger area.

Serendipitously, Philipps made the right call by leaving Guatemala, if only for his children. Schools in the country were closed for 18 months. But by 2023, the itch to return to Guatemala and attempt to pick up where he’d left off, was intense. A lot of things needed to fall in place and it took the better part of the 2023 billfish season to lay the groundwork for a sustainable future.

Post COVID, some countries recovered faster than others. Guatemala was slower to recover and, particularly in the sport fishing business. A critical question in the industry remained; how long after the world return to a new semblance of normalcy would clients want to return to Guatemala to chase billfish? Philipps was going to find out.

When Philipps returned to Guatemala in the fall of 2023, the Decisive had been in dry storage for almost three years, and his well trained crew had found employment elsewhere. The 2023 billfish season would be a business rebuild, the initiation, if you will, of Brad Philipps 2.0.

Philipps, if anything, is a stickler for perfection. He lives by his motto, “success is the intersection of preparation and opportunity,” and to this, he gives no quarter. First and foremost, the Decisive needed some TLC after sitting high and dry on chocks at the marina. Next, a new crew was required. Could Philipps find competent boatsman with the nuanced ability to think ahead of their captain once trained? Indeed, so complete is his pursuit of “success,” he is prepared to call off “opportunity” if “preparation” is lacking.

“Don’t come!” Philipps Whatsapped me two days before our planned trip for February 2024.” “The bite is off and the weather forecast is not good for the next week.” he continued. “I’d rather you boys come at the beginning of next year’s season to have a much better opportunity.”

Wow! What kind of business owner forgoes a bird in the hand to his own detriment but to the benefit of his clients? An honest man in the pursuit of “success,” that’s who.

Within a week Cindy has us rebooked for four days beginning on Halloween, 2024; Guatemala’s intersecting seasons between blue marlin and sailfish. As with a same day booking for dinner at the French Laundry, such perfect booking dates would have been impossible, even two years out, prior to the pandemic.

We arrived into Guatemala City early afternoon on 30 October and our driver Diego, one of Philipps’ few remaining long time employees, was late. Almost immediately, my phone rang. It was Cindy, calling from their home…in South Africa! Diego would be about “15 minutes late due to traffic,” she apologized, Guatemala’s citizens were, after all, in full travel mode for the Day of the Dead holiday weekend. While post COVID Guatemala, at least outwardly, seemed fully recovered, Philipp’s company, Guatemalan Billfishing Adventures, was still on the mend, with half the business, Cindy, still in South Africa.

It had been almost four years since I’d fished with Philipps on the Decisive and it was good to see him again when we arrived at his beautiful Casa Philipps compound in Antigua Guatemala. He had not changed much since I last fished with him. Except for the bit of fatigue in his voice when discussing getting his boat back up to championship fitness (which includes his new crew’s expertise), the intensity in his eyes still burned when discussing “the marlin bite.”

The following morning, on the Day of The dead, good juju was with us. The Papagayo Wind was sleeping, leaving the Decisive and it’s occupants a smooth sea in which to zoom the 18 miles offshore to where Philipps likes to begin his search for billfish. I'm riding in the bridge with Philipps, mostly listening to his chatter on the radio in both English and Spanish, depending on which boat he is talking to.

In short order, Philipps pulls the throttles back to trolling speed and the boys set the hookless spread of plastic lures and stitched ballyhoo on short and long lines behind the the Decisive. At trolling speed, the heavier rigs and teasers near the transom leave “smoke” contrails, inviting marlin and sailfish to come in for a look.

Never completely satisfied (until the moment of truth when his spread produces a result) he turns in his helm chair and whistles toward the cockpit. The head of one of his boys pops into view and Philipps conveys some important task in Spanish before the head disappears.

I watch as the boys change the left flatline from a green headed Islander lure to a blue and white headed one.

My angling buddies and I have already made requisite practice casts with the 16-weight fly rod behind the boat. Believe me, fucking-up a cast to a hot blue marlin will leave you feeling Philipp’s eyes burning holes in the back of your head. He expects precision and perfection from everyone, including his anglers. How else could you earn almost 40k billfish releases expecting less? And we know this going in, which is why we are here, fishing with the best of the best.

A Pacific blue marlin crashes the bridge teaser and the crew goes into full rote-memory-reaction-mode. Angler Pat DeJong jumps up and drops the pink and white Cam Sigler fly off the transom, it trails back from the forward motion of the Decisive. The mates scramble on the deck as Philipps booms commands and marlin-status-updates from the bridge. The fish is adroitly diverted from the teaser to a hookless flatline bait by one of the boys, prepping the stage for the bite on fly.

Within an instant Philipps hollers, “CAAAHST,” as he slips the Decisive’s transmissions into neutral. Simultaneously, DeJong water-hauls a perfect loop to the far side of the whitewater and places the Cam Sigler fly in the hole about to be left by the teaser, as it’s yanked from the water.

What happens next is a “holy shit!” moment (we have those exact raw words on an iPhone recording of the bite) which every dyed-in-the-wool fly-fisher must experience before they move on to Valhalla; the bite of a blue marlin on a fly! And the bite is only the beginning of the Universal Studiosesque adventure ride!

When DeJong’s marlin feels the hook, it goes off the rails on a ballistic surface run, which arcs a full 180-degrees back toward the boat. Intuitively, DeJong has already backed off on the fly reel’s drag from the initial strike to protect the 20-pound class tippet. The marlin would have ended up in the cockpit had it not been for Philipps goosing the throttles to lurch the Decisive out of the line of fire.

Once the explosive, initial hook-up chaos dissipated, DeJong’s slugfest began. A big marlin requires artistry in boat maneuvering to change fighting angles and reduce line belly as the fight progresses as the angler cannot beat such a fish on his own. And, Philipps is a driving maestro.

After a long hour, DeJong’s fish has finally surfaced and Philipps sees an opportunity. He slips the transmissions into reverse and briskly gooses the throttles. His engine turbos scream and the props cavitate sending a shudder through the entire boat. Black diesel smoke fills the cockpit as Philipps drives the Decisive backwards, in full reverse, almost on a plane! Water piles up and over the transom, quickly draining thorough the deck scuppers as the smoke begins to pull away with the Decisive gaining headway.

Philipps hollers to DeJong from the bridge, REEL, REEL, REEL, encouraging him to gain line while the marlin is thrashing about. Even big marlin can be fooled into a fast “IGFA release” (where the leader is retrieved inside of the first guide on the fly rod) when they are caught off guard fighting on the surface.

But for DeJong, a fast release is not to be. The fish sounds yet again, and he loses the fish after an epic two hour battle.

Perhaps conventional tackle anglers would feel disappointed for the loss. Maybe some fly-fishers as well, even knowing full well that the odds are grossly stacked against the angler. But there was zero disappointment amongst our team, anglers and crew alike, least of all, Captain Brad Philipps. In the case of fly fishing for blue marlin, success is not so much measured by official releases as by the precise, inter-meshing mechanics required to achieve a hook up in the first place.

Hooking a blue marlin on fly tackle is a cosmic experience and, thus, requires celebration. So, naturally, we engaged in fist bumps, high fives and man-hugs, followed by a round of cold Modelos from the ice chest. But a whistle from the bridge halts our merriment. Captain Brad Phillips 2.0, back at the top of his game, is eager to make the most of what he senses will be a good blue marlin day. There is a half day of charter left to look for another marlin, or two, or three, and he compels us to get back to work.

Indeed, already the Decisive is at trolling speed and a new spread of baits has been deployed. Over the buzz of the beer, I feel Philipps keen intensity as he scolds us from the bridge, “Great going boys! But we are back at it, so pay attention! Who’s on deck with the fly-rod?”

And so the quest continues for Captain Brad Phillips, 2.0, toward his historic quest of 40k billfish releases.