I spoke with Griffo this morning who's been taking advantage of some better fishing at Port this week on board his new 40foot White Cap Magic with 15 from the three days fishing thus far (including a PB for Mario on the rod with 5 in one day). And back out for more action today. Griffo says the bait has been back in plague proportions at the carpark Monday/Tuesday although as the only boat fishing out there yesterday he had a bit more trouble finding it. Of the 15 fish 5 were black marlin and the rest stripes - this is more like the ratios and captures that we've come to expect from Port. On Iona II, Capt. Trent fished Tuesday for 4 from 7. I hear more boats are heading out today so hopefully they'll be getting in amongst them again.

27 March Update: Griffo and team Magic added another six yesterday (and saw a heap more) bringing their tally to 21 from the four days fishing and I had a quick chat to Capt. Tim on Calypso yesterday who's also been getting amongst them with 20 fish for their last six days fishing.

Well once again it seems that Port has awaited the departure of most of the boats before turning on some decent fishing. Although its not anything like the 8 stripe-a-day days that we have come to look forward to, it is noticeably better than it has been. Capt. Laurie Wright travelled to Port to fish with Capt. Tim Dean on board Calypso with Laurie's Texan guests. During their five days fishing they released 7 stripes and saving the best for last, two black marlin in the 200 and 300lb range for anglers Dan and Will. A total of 9 marlin in 5 days (photo on the wrap on Calypso on left). Laurie has now headed down to Bermagui to spend some time with Dave Cassar on his newly christened Slammer (formerly Bill Dunkley's Bill Collector). Iona also took advantage of the good weather and better fishing to slip out on Friday for one from 3 and sent me another great photo from Rhino on the deck (right).

With the weather on the Gold Coast not fantastic, blue marlin reports are scarce for up this way. But at Port, good sized blues are still about for those fishing for them. More tales from last weekends' tournament have emerged. David fishing on Time to Tango tells me they had more than their fair share of drama while fighting and eventually losing a fish they put in the 8-900lb range. And Pacimo, traveling down from Port for the tournament fought a similar size fish for over three hours on stand-up - which became sit-down as the angler, so tired, ended up fighting the fish from the cockpit floor.

Full results of the weekend's Broken Bay Invitational Tournament are now in with a big thank you to Broken Bay GFC President Reub Hayes for all the details and pictures.

As I mentioned previously, congratulations to Capt. Hoggy and Reub and the team on board his boat In a Meeting who took out the Champion Boat Tag & Release, storming into contention with their first fish with two hours to go, and adding another two (a total of two blues in the 500 and 350lb range and striped marlin) before cease fishing for the win.

Pipi Paton on Bravo captured this pending Australian record blue marlin at 202kg on 15kg - big congratulations to Pipi on this fantastic effort! Bravo took out Champion Boat Capture with two blue marlin, both on 15kg with Rampage runner up with a blue and a stripe. Another notable capture was for LMGFC boat Kranky with a 103kg black marlin on 10kg - a 10 to 1 capture.

A nice run of blue marlin since the Interclub has seen good numbers of big fish being caught and indeed some more nice blues were fought, with one boat fighing a nice fish for 5 and a half hours on 37kg before busting it off.

Over 300 anglers on 86 boats competed.

With our last day at Port cancelled, we took advantage of the weather to make a speedy u-turn and return to the Gold Coast - Reel Chase will be arriving back at Marina Mirage today. Just in time for the blue marlin season to kick off in ernest.

I'd last heard blue marlin reports from Caboom the weekend of the 7th of March with Graham and team releasing one for each day in the 200kg range. And another report from yesterday (Sunday) with local boat Barco raising 9 out wide for 7 shots and 4 hookups, successfully tagging all four and narrowly missing hooking up on the double clearing the lures from the water.

There were also two more at Pt. Lookout and with the weather good all week, we'll be expecting more reports to trickle in.

With many boats heading out from Port fishing down to Broken Bay on Day 1 of the BB Tournament today, here's hoping the fish show up for the party. Yesterday at the original car park the going was slow, slow, slow. While we enjoyed some company from Freedom and Calypso on the bait schools, our daily fish-a-thon came to an end with Calypso snagging the only fish for the day first thing - a blue marlin for their Scottish course angler.

More from Brad who reports that Bermagui is coming alive with trailer boats out and about tagging fish during the week and Capt. Steve on Sea Bee tagging three from five Thursday.

A report from Brad at the 20th Alliance Tag & Release Tournament held at Bermagui on the weekend: Like Port Stephens, it seems the fishing at Bermi has been a little quiet with just the 6 marlin for the two days - 4 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday.

Congratulations to Brad and team on Aurora for taking out Champion Boat over 6.8m with 2 stripes and their angler Chris Sedgwick, Champion Male, and to Champion Lady Angler Sharon Garbutt on board Hot Shot!

Back at Port yesterday. It was a lonely day on the shelf for us on Reel Chase yesterday only coming across just the one other trailer boat. But it appears the current has backed off a bit and a bit more bait appearing. We managed to live bait yesterday for the first time in over a week which resulted in another single striped T&R for the day for angler Angus.

Hopefully good numbers of fish find the bait schools soon.

Caption Left: Scotty sent me this photo of Freedom in action on Day 3 of the Interclub (taken I believe by Capt. Tim fishing nearby) of this approx 250lb black marlin they fought on 30lb at the Gibber for several hours. Despite having it close to the tag shot on several occasions early in the fight, 6 and a half miles out to sea later they again raised the fish only to break it off on the leader. What a shot!

Caption Right: In trying conditions yesterday Reel Chase again fished the shelf yesterday hooking two stripes and successfully tagging this one for angler Scott. In the morning, there was more bait around again but by lunch time a patch of hot, dirty water had moved in from inshore and it all shut down.

Leading boat Tag & Release Di Da Ke secured their lead with an early tag of striped marlin on Day 2. Meanwhile a number of blues were being fought to the boat with the existing heaviest marlin award at 210kg held by Weapon in serious doubt. The mark was raised just after lunch by Obsession with a 216.5kg blue. But in a dramatic finish, Di Da Ke hooked up only minutes before cease fishing and battled the fish for a further hour and a half. We came over to have a look and saw four grown men struggling to pull the fish into the boat and with a 6 o'clock deadline, the hammers were down to the weigh-station which they made with 2 minutes to spare. The fish going 288kg (635lb) - one of the biggest weighed at Port Stephens in many years.

Overwhelmingly fish caught on Sunday were blue marlin although Dreamcatcher II reported a 120kg striped marlin released in closer to the temperature break, one of the biggest stripes in the area in a while as well.

More boats on the shelf courtesy of the Shootout Tournament meant that our later start - at gentlemen's hours - saw us arriving in time to see Di Da Ke on a double hookup of stripey's having found a bait meat ball loaded with fish instead of the usual dolphins. Di Da Ke added another stripey later in the morning to lead the Tag & Release in the tournament thus far. Closely followed by Time Out who tagged an astounding three blues which is not surprising when you look at the recent satellite imagery which shows dramatic temperature break fronts of 3 degrees centigrade off the shelf wide of Seal Rocks. Another boat leading the Shootout is Weapon who boated a 210kg blue marlin on 50lb for Junior Angler Miles which is an astounding effort for a young fisherman of the future.

Meanwhile back on Reel Chase a frustrating day of seeing stripeys but not hooking up changed late in the day when we managed to hook the world's dumbest stripey for Peter who gave us some magical photo ops at the back of the boat and some more good underwater TowCam footage. Also not fishing the tournament, Mauna Kea got a double header of stripes in the morning including a first marlin for their lady angler.

We're back at Port Stephens for the weekend and on Reel Chase headed out for our first day back Friday to (once again) reported fabulous weather - somewhat dismayed to find big swells. The trip out and the trip home were less than pleasurable, thankfully it gave up a little during the day.

While fishing reports had been much of the same for the week, we headed out with some enthusiasm and were not disappointed. Although our first fish, a 40kg black marlin wore through the light tackle trace before we could get a tag in, on the edge of the shelf, we were again met by thousands of dolphins and mutton birds, and started marking a few marlin down deep. This eventually lead to the first strike, from a striped marlin for angler Mick which could be seen on the underwater footage when we reviewed it later, rocketing up from the depths like a missile.

Two black marlin follows later, we tagged our second stripey for Clint from a pack of at least four fish that materialized at the transom and continued to follow the boat while we fought the fish to the tagpole. Despite it making a vain attempt at tagging us (picture below).

Nearby on Mauna Kea, Capt. Tim made the most of two bites for the day tagging a blue and striped marlin - the blue at around 400lb giving them a great display. Trailer boat Josh managed a 1-1-1 striped marlin in the trying conditions. And Calypso finished the day with a black marlin near Fingal Lighthouse on the way in.
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Smithy gives us another update from the Sunshine Coast Thursday - the blacks are still in residence. Tanjian went 7 from 10, Ymer got 3 switchbaiting, Keneka another 2 and Triton ended up with 2 plus a wahoo.

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Sad news for the gamefishing fraternity with the passing this morning of the original Cairns deckhand and skipper Gordon Hallam at Proserpine. He will be sadly missed by those who had the pleasure of his company over the years.

Capt. Smithy reports the bite has gone wide open on the Sunshine Coast. 5 metre trailer boat Askari tagged 16 from 25 trolling yesterday, on Triton Smithy got 6 from 10. Watch Ya Problem tagged 11, Keneka 7 and Tanjian with 2 for Heath on board solo. Sounds like an awesome day on the water.

On the Gold Coast, the bite also continues but you have to pick your days. While numbers like they have experienced on the Sunshine Coast were common last week, a lot of boats fished Sunday at Spot X for very little result. Perhaps because the current had once again picked up and was running strong. On Monday, the current stopped again and the fish were back on the bite. We've heard reports of boats getting up to 14 bites for the day and with up to 12 releases. Then again Tuesday, the current started to run hard once more and the bite shut down.

If you had some spare time on either of the coasts, why wouldn't you get out and try your luck? The Surfers Paradise G&SFC are holding their All Tackle, All Species tournament this weekend - hopefully the fish hang around for the comp.

The weather surprised us on Day 4 with good weather forecast but not eventuating. Most of the fleet made it out to the grounds okay before the front came through, but many soon chose to turn around and head back into port.

We came across KEKOA not long after start fishing and the front came through backing up furiously and solidly dousing everyone on board chasing a blue marlin which they successfully tagged (and shortly followed up with another stripe). But then the bite seemed to move a bit further north where some of the fleet were able to pull two or three fish off a meat ball. Born Free added a black marlin to their first weekend results giving them the margin they needed to retain the lead.

I didn't attend the presentation so I don't have the final 'official' results. However I do know that Lake Macquarie took out the Capture Team gong, and Newcastle/Port Stephens took out the Tag & Release. Born Free was Champion Boat Tag & Release and Offshore Champion Boat Capture. And, the Townsville GFC team on board KEKOA took out the champion visiting team award for the second year running.

The fishing improved day 3 on the edge and a few little blacks have shown up inside as well as some decent blues. Ted's Toy weighed a 273kg blue.

The day started off pretty well for both Weapon and T-Star in the morning session, which only got better for T-Star who added another in the afternoon. The Beshoff family on Offshore continued their Port Stephens tradition with another good day and seemingly pulling further into the lead.

Inside, KEKOA fishing off Broughton Island caught a sailfish (not for the angler with it on her bucket list), and a decent sized black, keeping their away team lead status. On board Reel Chase we had chaser early in the day that didn't hook-up and for a change, the live slimeys were everywhere. After lunch we managed to add to our points with a successful switch and followed it up just before cease fishing with another aggressive fish on the milkfish teasers, which although he stole the teaser, was hungry enough to take the live bait - resulting in a second successful tag and release for first time marlin angler Bob.
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UPDATE: Current standings of the NSW Interclub at the end of day 3 are:

Capture Teams = 1. Lake Macquarie T2, 2. Sydney T1, Newcastle/Port Stephens T1.
Capture Boats = 1.Offshore, 2. Outcast, 3. Ambition.

Tag & Release Teams = 1. Newcastle/Port Stephens T2, 2. Newcast/Port Stephens T6 on countback from 3. Lake Macquarie T1.
T&R Boats = 1. Born Free, 2. Weapon 3. Time Out.