"Slack is the enemy. Reel, reel, reel!"

The Capitals' Sylvain Cote was yelling the command, and I was obeying. I wasn't about to be the one who let the fish get away.

Besides, after half a day of fishing on the 61-foot boat 75 miles from Ocean City, Md., I'd finally landed one. No 50-pound marlin was going to beat the only woman on the excursion.

An hour earlier, the 6'2", 200-lb. Steve Konowalchuk had brought in his catch, an acrobatic 10-foot leaping 35-pounder, with ease. As I reeled and used my thumb to guide the fishing line around the reel, Jeff Halpern attached a plastic belt to my waist so I could place the pole in the belt rest, rather than in my aching abdomen.

"Look at him jump," Sylvain pointed.

"No, I don't want her to look," the thirty-something captain Fred, donning a marlin-slimed T-shirt, fired back. "I need her to reel."

So I buried my head, with the photographer's camera in my face, and I kept reeling, hoping the 20-pound test line would hold. The 1 1/2-mile circumference the Fin-nominal vessel was trolling, between Washington Canyon and Poor Man Canyon, had been hot all summer, and this was already the sixth marlin we spotted. I saw a quick flash of silver close to the boat, and then a full view of the billed fish, and whish. Catch and release. Sport fishing. More than just a hobby for Sylvain and crew.

"I told you that it was seven or eight hours of boredom for five minutes of chaos," the 35-year-old said as he smiled at me. "You just experienced the five minutes of chaos."

"Did you see the way she manhandled that fish?" Steve asked. "You know that's going in the story."

The mate Pete prepared the lines, outriggers and sparkling teaser while we began the process over again -- staring at the blue water, preparing for the next marlin to come up on the ballyhoo bait.

"Now you know why I'm addicted," Sylvain said. "Marlin are so beautiful. There's nothing like watching them trailing the bait."

At 7 p.m., we pulled into slip C-12, and I tried to escape. "Your first billed fish, right?" Sylvain asked me.

Yeah, it was my first billed fish -- and Ocean City tradition dictates that when you catch your first billed fish you're to be thrown into the ocean water by the captain.

Maybe I should have let mine be the one that got away.

Shelly Gepfert covers The Life for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail her at shelly.gepfert@espnmag.com.