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I don’t have much to report from the weekend so I’ll keep it short (please keep an eye on the
Twitter feed between posts):
Innisfail Light Tackle Billfish Comp report from Capt. Tim Ryan – fishing still slow as with Townsville. At the end of Day 2, only 3 billfish tags reported (I believe two sails and one marlin). Fishing finishes today. Castille III has been out exploring post-Townsville tournament, getting Steph her first sail from a large pod on Friday (her first after 9 years trying – congrats!) but spent much of the bad weather for the rest of the weekend sheltered on the reef.
Capt. Ross on Top Shot finshed his first heavy tackle trip of the season yesterday and reports that the Bank is loaded with bait, scad, runners, skipjacks and yellowfin — looking all set to fire. On Saturday they went one from three smaller fish (to 200lb) in the rough conditions.
This post was imported into WordPress from my old Black Marlin Fishing Blog website without any accompanying photos. If you’d like to see the original post, with the accompanying photographs, go to the original Black Marlin Fishing Blog site and navigate to the post using the archive navigation links on the right-hand-side.
Now that the Townsville comp is over, most of the remaining fleet will be making their way to Cairns for the upcoming start of the heavy tackle season (with a few stopping off in Innisfail for their light tackle comp). We expect that boats will be making their first heavy tackle trips within the next few weeks. News from
Watchdog who fished through Linden Bank yesterday, jumping two blacks off to 300lbs and also reporting another boat on the Ribbons with a 450lb-er.
The scad should be getting very nervous about now 
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Congratulations to the teams on
Sea Baby IV and
Oi Bud who took out the Over 8m and under 8m categories respectively. Just 20 fish were tagged for the tournament which was a marked decrease from last year, perhaps even one the lowest number tournaments since the inaugural event in 1983 when the fleet ventured no farther afield than just wide of Cape Cleveland (due to the weather and also because the juvenile black marlin grounds off Cape Bowling Green had not yet been ‘discovered’).
Just one more week for us in our light tackle season before we head up to Cairns to gear up for the big girls!
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Day3 = slow. Northerly trumps the full moon.Castille III had lady luck on their side yesterday with the only fish of the tournament on Day 3 – a sailfish for angler Eddie Shi. Enjoying a raft-up with the team on KEKOA last night, we benefited from a POB history lesson. Peter perhaps the only to have fished all 27 Townsville Tournaments, and with one day’s fishing to go, this may be his first without him turning a reel. Capt. Jim suggests the lack of juvenile black marlin seems do with the lack of baby marlin from last year’s spawning as the number of returned fish (2+ years old) seems to be consistent with previous years. (The fish we lost was in this larger category). Also, the percentage of sailfish in the catch is touching on 50% which it hasn’t done for a long, long time.As always, there has been a number of the larger ‘reef marlin’ seen during the tournament although 6kg is a hard task, including the est. 300lb-er the boys on Reel Ripe fought at Rib Reef yesterday for over 1.5 hours and hampered by gearbox problems (no reverse).
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Day 1 and 2 delivered some of the best weather we have ever experienced during the Townsville Tournament. Unfortunately, the fishing has failed to keep up its side of the bargain. On Day 1, Utopia tagged the first fish, a black marlin just after 2pm – right on the low tide. Within minutes, this was followed by blacks for both Bad Company and Sea Baby IV. And that was it for Day 1 (although on Reel Chase we had hopes of joining the few with fish until we jumped off our black shortly after.)Day 2 saw an increase in the number of fish tagged, as we move further away from the full moon – by my count 14 in total for the day with the first marlin of the day going to Mates Rates and the first sailfish of the tournament not long after to Oi Bud all before the first sked at 11am this time. Oi Bud followed up soon after with a black marlin to put them in the lead in the under 8m section with two tags and Sea Baby tagged their second black marlin to put them in the lead in the Over 8m section. Lining up for the shotgun start and Mojo on their black marlin on Day 2. With the bait being a lot more consistent throughout the whole day today, the fishing, although still slow, was spread out over the whole day. This pattern should continue over the next couple of days.Correcting my Twitter, Bad company is still on one fish due to calling their accumulated tags at the skeds. And apologies for the delayed updates as we had no internet service overnight. Apparently we have some antennas to sort out before the heavy tackle season starts!
