BAJA AGONY, BLUE DREAM : BRETT PAULY.

``Reel, reel, reel, reel.''

The skipper's command reverberated in my gray matter with sickening adhesiveness.

Being on the business end of an angry, 500-pound blue marlin came courtesy of picking the long straw. An enviable position? That's debatable. Frightening? That's affirmative.

The trip's first at-bat came without warning in the wake of a day and a half of luckless trolling the tepid waters off the eastern tip of Baja California - the fabled billfish haven known as the East Cape. And never was an angler more ill prepared to tackle such a monster.

``Reel, reel, reel, reel.''

The words registered with impeccable lucidity. That's what happens when one's snapped out of a sound nap by a ``fire''-like warning. Unfortunately, the arms were slower to respond; the sudden excitement had apparently short-circuited the synapses and reeling was a remote possibility, let alone making a fist.

As the numbness wore off, an audio overload set in. Instructions in what seemed a plethora of languages were shouted in a garbled whir the brain could not translate. Only one bit of coaching - ``Keep the rod tip up to maintain pressure on the line'' - was retained. It became an obsession and was executed to perfection, even when the captain gunned the boat to keep the line taut, momentarily enveloping me in an intense fear of falling overboard.

Little else was done properly. The bent outrigger rod was pulled from its holder without first unleashing the safety rope; not a single crank could get past that damnable cord.

Fellow fishermen attempted to fasten the fighting belt that should have been in place well in advance. For all their good-hearted efforts, they appeared only as irritating, fumbling minions; a bruised belly from the rod butt would later attest to their failure.

Pandemonium - a word that marlin anglers must relate to - was the only way to describe the episode.

When finally I collapsed into the fighting chair after all else went awry and the rod was secured, the reel handle was rotated with surprising ease. That's because the big blue was off - it quietly shook the hook after the longest, most nerve-wracking 4 minutes of my life.

``It seems like when you hook the blue marlin, if you make it through the first five minutes you have a 50-50 chance of landing it,'' said Pete Gray, co-host of the radio fishing show ``Let's Talk Hook Up'' and an accompanying angler aboard the cruiser that had scoured the Sea of Cortez for signs of fish life.

Hardly a comforting notion, knowing that had the brute been played just another 60 seconds, my chances of bringing it to the boat were as good as calling ``heads'' in a coin toss.

I did receive some sense of solace from Mario Lucero Verduzco, at the helm of the El Thomas out of Hotel Playa del Sol.

``It wasn't your fault. You did a very good job,'' said Verduzco, a 15-year veteran skipper who claims to typically underestimate the weights of marlin, meaning this leviathan could have tilted the scales at as much as 700 pounds. ``That's happened to me many times.''

I couldn't help but think it was so much lip service, since I really didn't do anything.

Just as well, I suppose. Who knows what could have happened if the fish would have been set. Maybe I would have landed it - what an alarming thought.

That marlin was the biggest fish I'd ever seen and would have obliterated my personal-best 35-pound grouper I boated in New Zealand when I was 10. I was in denial that anything that large could possibly have been on the end of my line. When the blue made it's single breach and splashed down with a 500-pound thud, it was the single scariest, most thrilling, most mind-numbing feeling I've ever known.

The ensuing fight, which could have lasted 10 hours on 50-pound line - or 50 minutes, for that matter - probably would have been a letdown.

``It was the best four minutes of what the fight would have been; the rest would have been all work,'' Gray said. ``Blues fight to the death; they are the ultimate warriors.''

That actually was comforting. Without all the extra distractions of having to break a sweat - no doubt a very long, very heavy sweat - the images of that awesome jump and the chaos that followed are now indelibly inscribed in my mind.

I wasn't alone.

``I was shaking,'' Valley Center angler Mark Weir said afterward. ``It was the first time I was in a boat when a blue's been hooked up. I've never even seen one in the water. That's a trip-maker right there.''

Never mind that the deckhand had tied on a hook that was too small for the huge purple-and-black jig that enticed the blue.

``To a marlin that big, a little hook like that is nothing,'' Verduzco said. ``The first shake of the head and it's out.''

Reeks of pilot error, huh? Wish I had known that before I started reeling for all I was worth. It would have saved me quite a heartbreak.

Was it disappointing to strike out? Of course.

Did it ruin my trip? It made my trip. For 4 minutes, I had a marlin on my line. And not a striped marlin but a blue marlin. People can fish their whole lives and not hook a blue marlin.

I might still be billfishless less but not for lack of trying. After all, I hooked a 500-pound blue, and how many can say that?

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: (color) A blue marlin hooked off Baja California's East Cape can be a source of exhilaration and frustration. Landing one is different matter entirely.

Courtesy, ``Inside Sportfishing''