942 



Fishery Bulletin 101(4) 



a 10-point maximum, the ACESS score of the tagged blue 

 marhn ranged from 8 to 10 (Table 1). Of the fish that re- 

 ceived a score of less than 10, the primary reason was a 

 loss of color, and minor body musculature lacerations. All 

 blue marlin were hooked in the jaw, whether caught on a 

 "J" hook (n=9) or a circle hook («=1). 



Soak time, the maximum period that the hooked fish 

 could have been on the hook, did not appear to have an ef- 

 fect on either the reporting of the PSAT tags or the ACESS- 

 scored physical condition of the blue marlin (Table 1). The 

 two tags that did not report (5D-3 and 5D-6) were attached 

 to fish with calculated soak times of 13 and 19 hours, re- 

 spectively, both well under the maximum soak time of 35 

 hours. The one particularly long soak time (tag 30D-2) 

 resulted from a parting of the mainline during an offshore 

 storm and a subsequent two-day haulback. Boggs (1992) 



noted that substantial numbers of striped marlin were 

 caught while gear was rising during haulback. Assum- 

 ing similar behavior among other istiophorid species, this 

 observation may explain the good to excellent condition 

 noted for the blue marlin in our study even after extended 

 soak times. Developing hook-timer technology may allow 

 further description of the relationship, if any, between soak 

 time and the actual length of time that a fish is hooked on 

 the gear. 



PSAT performance 



The two PSAT models used for our study reflect the rap- 

 idly developing technology in this field. The difference in 

 types and amounts of data recorded presented an apparent 

 trade-off between the parameters measured (the resolu- 



