As quoted by Donnell A. Tate in "Desperado joins 500-pound club"...(July 2002)

Lahaina - The Desperado made it into the 500-pound club with a 584.4 pound blue marlin by Greg Hayenga.  Captain Dan Shaffer and Co-capt. Ed Akiu were working the "Factory" are between the LA-Buoy and Kamaiki Point, Lanai, when Dan spotted something come in on the center rod position. The fish made a 180-degree turn, making a big boil on the surface, and missed the lure. Dan came down from the tower to the bridge and stared right at the lure. He thought it might have been a hallucination.
The lure was still sitting in the wave where Dan had set it, so he free-spooled the reel and dropped the lure backward a few yards. He cranked the lure up to the wave then free-spooled it backward again. The reel started ripping line from the loose drag pretty fast.
Dan kept the boat moving forward for about a minute before they saw the marlin come flying out of the water 100 yards away in the wake.  Ed started clearing the lines.  The marlin tail-walked away from them for 100 yards, then began grey hounding back and forth across the stern.
Dan handed the rod down to Ed who placed it into one of the chair rod holders. Once the marlin settled down, Dan left the bridge and started clearing the rest of the lines. Ed took over the helm. The boat was still moving forward as the marlin continued to take line.
The marlin surfaced 4-5 minutes later coming straight back toward the boat. There was 350 yards of line out in a big bow.  Dan pushed the drag up to about 40 pounds of pressure and got Greg in the chair. Ed slowed the boat.
The marlin never sounded but stayed on the surface, jumping and grey hounding for another ten minutes with heavy drag on the reel. Finally the marlin burned itself out and stopped its run. Ed kept the fish straight off the stern as Greg gained line during the next 30 minutes.
The marlin came up to double line in the prop wash and dug in under the boat.  Dan grabbed the leader and wrestled with the fish for a couple of minutes as it darted back and forth across the stern.
Dan had to dump the line. Ed started spinning the boat in a counter-clockwise circle, getting the marlin off the port side.  Dan could barely see the marlin deep in the prop wash as he grabbed the leader again. After a few more switch backs, the marlin turned away from the boat and came toward the surface. Dan pulled the fish back to the boat.
When the marlin was 4-5 feet away, Dan took some solid wraps and held on. The marlin was tired and put up little resistance.  Ed came off the helm and got a good stick with the fly-gaff. He reached out and grabbed the bill with his other hand as Dan got a meat hook under the chin. All that was left was to pull it into the boat.

As quoted by David Finkelstein in "Maui has Marlin Too"...

Dan Shaffer captains the Desperado, a vintage Bertram 31 which, however anachronistic in today's world of mega-yachts, nonetheless struck a warmly nostalgic note with me, as it was identical to a boat I once owned and took across the Florida Strait to fish (and win) a tournament in Cuba in the 1970s. Shaffer's other anglers were a young couple from Cleveland and an accountant from Columbus, Ohio, whose wife remained on shore. Like me, the two men from Ohio had come to the islands eager to fish Hawaiian waters and perhaps even to catch their first marlin, but they were equally eager that their wives be happy as well. Maui, the in-laws had told them, not only was the "most laid-back, the least commercialized" of the Hawaiian Islands, but also "offered the most to do" as well. So, with Honolulu dismissed by the menfolk as just another big city, and Kona by their wives as just one big fishing resort, they had heeded their in-laws' advice and settled on Maui as the logical compromise.

Unfortunately, we didn't raise any marlin that day, and, from what we heard later, with the full moon it was a slow week everywhere in the islands. According to Shaffer, who's had triple-headers with stripies and double-headers with blues, the action off Maui can be as hot as anywhere in the Hawaiian Islands. Shaffer's biggest fish, incidentally, was an 898-pound blue caught just a half-hour out of Lahaina Harbor. Unlike Kona, of course, getting such big fish so close to home is the exception, not the rule, in Maui. The best fishing grounds lie off Molokai, and it takes the better part of an hour to reach them....



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