How one fish changed everything for this renowned captain

Capt. Olaf Grimkowski went from printing apprentice to four-grander captain after one 950-pound blue marlin changed his life.

What began as a one-day charter on July 31, 1996, ended up plotting the course for Capt. Olaf “Grimmel” Grimkowski’s career. At the time, Grimkowski was a printing apprentice in his hometown of Bielefeld, Germany. He had no offshore fishing experience and a personal best of a 30-pound carp. A neighbor, co-owner of the 36-foot Hatteras Xacara who fished in the Azores, introduced him to blue marlin through a stack of fishing videos. That was enough.

Grimkowski, splitting the trip with a friend of the owner, saved $1,000 and booked a single-day charter out of Horta at the start of the season. As it turned out, Grimmel’s  learning curve came fast. Fishing had been slow, so the crew ran to an unconventional area off the airport. They raised a fish early, estimated at 400 pounds, but lost it. A second opportunity followed when a blue marlin piled on a blue-and-silver Mold Craft Wide Range that was double-hook rigged on 80-pound line.

Grimkowski settled into the chair for his first real test.“I fought that fish for about an hour,” he says. The marlin showed early, jumping before sounding and digging deep. By the time it reached the boat, it was spent. The mate moved to gaff the fish, but the captain waved him off and called for a release.

They estimated the fish at 950 pounds, an almost unfathomable size for someone who, hours earlier, had never seen a marlin outside a video. That moment, equal parts chaos, adrenaline, and restraint, sealed it for Grimkowski.

 First Fish, Second Career

Grimkowski still points to a photo of himself as a 5-year-old in Denmark. In the picture he’s grinning behind a small flounder he caught on a Baltic Sea party-boat trip with his father. For Grimkowski, summers have always meant fishing, whether in Denmark or the Netherlands, chasing cod and salmon. But big game wasn’t on the radar until 1996. “Catching that 950-pound blue marlin really destroyed my interest in fishing for anything but big-game offshore species,” he says. He returned to the Azores the following year and, in just two days, landed a giant bluefin. A year later, he bought a 28-foot Chris-Craft, Flamen, kept it in Horta, and spent several seasons fishing for fun.

The turning point for Grimkowski’s professional sportfishing career came through that same boat. Its previous owner, Joerg Dieter Haselhorst, ran a charter operation in the Azores and planned to relocate two boats, a 38-foot Bertram Shy 3 and a 36-foot Rampage Harmattan, to Ghana. Haselhorst needed crew asked if Grimkowski wanted to come as a deckhand.

Grimkowski asked his boss at the print shop where he worked for three months of unpaid leave, booked a ticket to West Africa, and went. In 1999, he joined Capt. Jeff Anderson and then first mate Marty Bates aboard Harmattan. Fishing off Ghana along the continental shelf 12 to 20 miles offshore, where depths dropped quickly to 600 feet. Based out of the Volta River, they worked that edge through a March-to-June peak, with a secondary fall bite from October to December.

Ghana delivered steady action for them, even if the scales didn’t always reflect it. Grimkowski recalls a fishery full of long, lean blue marlin. Many of the fish were in the 500- to 800-pound range, but they looked much larger. “You’d think they were monsters,” he says. “But they were extremely skinny.” But what the grounds lacked in true giants, they made up for in volume. “Some days we caught four or five, just lure fishing,” he says.

Exploring the Eastern Atlantic

Grimkowski returned briefly to the print shop, found a replacement for himself, and then went back to Ghana full-time for the next two seasons. In early summer 2002, Haselhorst moved Harmattan and Shy 3 to Ascension Island. Grimkowski joined the team.

“Nobody knew how the fishing would be,” he says. “The Madam and Hooker, then called God’s Will and God’s Favor, arrived a few weeks before us. They had slow fishing at first and were about to leave when they caught a 1,337-pounder. That changed their minds.”

Deep water lay just minutes from the mooring, but for Grimkowski and crew the bite never settled into a pattern. “In Ascension, you can catch marlin five minutes after leaving the mooring,” he says. “On the lee side, there’s about a mile of relatively shallow water before it drops off, so it’s mostly deep-water fishing. Even with all the structure, the fishing felt random. A sonar would have helped a lot back then.”

Grimkowski first arrived in Cape Verde in 2004. He joined the crew of 46-foot Bertram Andromeda out of Mindelo on São Vicente Island, working as a deckhand for Captain Ezequiel “Zak” Conde.  He quickly moved to the helm.

“The fishing was immediately fantastic,” he says. “Red hot. It was crazy, but windy, really windy. There were three other boats and everyone shared information, so we figured it out quickly.”

Since 2004, Grimkowski has followed the bite: Cape Verde from March through mid-July, then the Azores from mid-July through mid-October. Ascension Island filled his winter schedule until 2017, when civilian flights stopped. Grimkowski has lived in Cape Verde since 2013, where he settled down and started a family. The world-class marlin fishing didn’t hurt.

Granders, Records, and the World Cup

Grimkowski’s résumé spans decades and includes acchievements as a captain, wireman, and angler. He has contributed to multiple world records and has put four granders on the scales, including two over 1,300 pounds.In fact, Olaf Grimkowski is the only captain to weigh two Atlantic blue marlin eclipsing 1,300. .

His first grander came in January 2012 off Ascension Island, when angler Michael Callahan boated a 1,093-pound blue marlin aboard Harmattan. A year later, again off Ascension, Grimkowski captained angler Kevin Gardner to a 1,320-pound fish.

“That day, my regular deckhand had a night trip and couldn’t go,” he says. “The son of another boat owner came with us and had never wired a fish.” After three surface runs, the marlin sounded. The first-time wireman made several attempts before gaining control. The fight ended in about three hours. “In the end, he did a good job,” Grimkowski smiles.

Also in 2013, aboard Xacara in the Azores, Grimkowski put angler Sherrell Carter on a 533-pound blue marlin, earning her the women’s 16-pound IGFA line-class world record.Some 12 years later, that record still stands.

In 2015, a Hawaiian team led by Capt. Bryan Toney chartered Harmattan for two months off Ascension. In late November, angler Jada Holt landed a 1,305-pound blue marlin in just 20 minutes.Grimkowski was on the wire. Holt’s catch is the heaviest Atlantic blue marlin ever recorded by a female angler and holds the women’s 130-pound IGFA line-class world record.

His fourth grander came the following year. In August, fishing out of the Azores aboard Xacara, Grimkowski teamed with Bates as angler Daniel Lluhi boated a 1,042-pound blue marlin.

In 2020, with Grimkowski as an angler abord the 38 Henriquez La Onda Mila, he and Marty Bates won the Blue Marlin World Cup with a 964-pound blue marlin. “I was running Andromeda at the time, but in 2020 we had no clients because of COVID-19,” he says. “Sam Peters had booked to fish July Fourth with Marty, but he couldn’t travel. He told us to fish instead, so I went as the angler.”

 After three slow days out of Cape Verde, the team made a move to the northwest bank. “On the bite, we thought it was maybe a 600-pounder,” he recalls. “But when we measured it, the formula put it at 970. I knew we had a shot. I couldn’t stay awake for the Kona finish, but the next morning I found out we won.”

Favorite Place to Fish

Thankfully, charter fishing rebounded by 2023, and Grimkowski has settled back into his seasonal rhythm between the Azores and Cabo Verde. The latter is still his favorite place to fish. Since 2025, he has captained the 43-foot G&S Hooker, now equipped with sonar.

As our conversation began to wind down, it felt only appropriate to ask.  Given Grimkowski’s extensive experience with truly big fish, few captains would  have better perspective about the whether the mythical “tonner” blue marlin, a 2,000-pound blue marlin might really exist.

“I’m positive,” he says. “There’s not just one, but a few. They won’t be easy to catch.”

And while Grimkowski has built a reputation as one of the top big-fish operators in the world, with a résumé to match, what stands out most is how he got here. His path wasn’t inherited or engineered, it was a leap. A decision to dive headfirst into a life built around the pursuit of the biggest game fish in the ocean, driven purely by passion.

So, what advice does he have for someone dreaming of chasing granders for a living? “Not much,” he says.

“It doesn’t take much,” he says. “You need the courage to do it. You have to leave your life behind and take a risk. I started as a second deckhand with no skills, learned from the people around me and stuck with it.”  Wise perecptive and a fitting way to sum up the character of someone who has helped rewrite what’s possible in the world of big-game angling. 

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