“Beware the Ides of March!” Shakespeare wrote those words in his play, Julius Caesar, but they can certainly be applied to the local fishing scene at present.

Getting a good view of what is happening is getting difficult because the commercial operators who provide the majority of the intelligence for the entire fishing fraternity are somewhere betwixt and between as they try to wring some profit out of the spiny lobster fishery and still manage to get their traps ashore in time for the end-of-the-month deadline.

There continues to be some trolling activity offshore, although the concentration of seaweed makes this a formidable task. Those who persevere will be rewarded with some wahoo and tuna, and even the occasional dolphinfish. It is probably safe to say that many of the species associated with summer conditions are now to be found on the offshore grounds and the increase in effort that will come with the cessation of the lobster season will provide a more accurate assessment of the situation.

The wahoo are of a respectable size, so the amateur probably needs only one or two to satisfy home needs. There are some tuna around of both the blackfin and yellowfin variety and there has been some success chumming for the latter. Naturally, it will take improved conditions to make this a technique of choice, but the way the water is warming up and the weather complying, everything could happen quite quickly.

There is a link doing the rounds of an albino blue marlin that was hooked off the popular fishing grounds in Los Sueños, Costa Rica. As one might expect, they show a blue marlin leaping, cavorting and carrying on as they are famous for; but there are thousands of billfish photographs such as that. The difference is that it takes some imagination to think of the all-white fish in question as a blue marlin. There is no question — based on its structure, behaviour and the experienced crew members who saw the fish — that it is, in fact, a blue marlin. It can be found on the Internet at http://billfishreport.com/billfish-report/rare-albino-blue-marlin/. Quite a few anglers and interested individuals have also provided other links on Facebook and via e-mail to friends and the general public.

Most are familiar with albino versions of many species. They seem to occur in all sorts of animals, including humans. The apocryphal Moby Dick was supposed to be just such a creature, although there is photographic evidence of albino whales. There are also some whales that are naturally white that occur in Arctic regions.

What is really amazing about this fish is that it is truly white in colour. Unlike the white marlin, which is really not all that different in colouration to a blue marlin, tending to be lighter but still having the darker shading on its back and lighter on its belly or the black marlin, which is not really black but has its darker colouration on its back and a lighter belly. This particular specimen is white all over and has pink eyes — the total lack of pigment.

That the blue marlin is not blue is amazing enough, but what is really against the odds is the mere survival of the fish to adulthood. Fish colouration is not for the benefit of the casual observer; it is part of a rather effective camouflage that both protects the fish from predators and gives it an advantage as a predator by making it difficult to see coming.

Imagine looking down into the depths from above. It is all dark down there, so the dark back of a fish will blend in and be very difficult to see. The same holds true for something deeper, looking up. The light at the surface will have it looking bright and, so, a white belly becomes nigh on invisible as well.

Being all white takes away these advantages and makes the fish stand out, which therefore puts it at greater risk. It may not matter now that it is an apex predator and one of the fastest fish in the sea, but it was not always like that. Once upon a time, it was a juvenile, weighing just a few pounds and surely getting the attention of every hunter that it encountered. Given the “fish eat fish” world out there, this particular beast has to have been incredibly fortunate to avoid its demise a long time ago. Its sheer survival has beaten incredible odds. Yet, of all the marlin that there must be in the sea, someone hooked it and actually saw it. Longer odds than the betting man would like!

Staying on the paler side of things, many stories in the media have concerned the great white shark (which isn’t really white, either!) known as Lydia, which has been successfully tracked. Once the subject of local concern as she wended her way past the Island, her present claim to fame is an Atlantic crossing from the Western Atlantic, where most of the previous data has located her, to the Eastern Atlantic, where her travels may take her northward or she may turn toward the east, which would carry her close to the British Isles or farther south toward the Iberian Peninsula or any of the island groups in the region.

If nothing else, this proves something that many have long suspected; and that is that these top-order predators go wherever they want, whenever they want. Just more evidence that when you fish from an island in the middle of the Atlantic, there is no telling what may be on the other end of your Tight Lines!!!