Weekend marlin fishing reports – this report was started on Sunday and you can see the updates from this monrning (Monday) in bold.

Port Stephens

• I had a good catch up chat to Capt. Tim Dean on Calypso this morning who’s reporting some really good fishing out of Port Stephens right now.  Tim says the water is 24 degrees with little or no current and the fact that we’ve had no floods so far this year (touch wood) means that the water is clean.  Tim caught a 100kg blue marlin 3 miles off Cabbage Tree yesterday in just 40 fathoms of water and missed another blue and striped marlin.  The day before they tagged four and the day before that, three.  So far this morning fishing they already have two stripes on the board! Update: I just heard from Capt. Tim again who’s on his way in – 5 striped marlin for the day and heading in for the early mark. Great day!
• I also heard from Grant Morley on his boat Kahlua fishing just wide of the Car park area on Thursday who went an awesome 7-5-5. Grant says they were all striped marlin and they caught one on a skip bait as they were approaching the spot, and the rest on livies.
• Little Audrey’s Capt. Daniel Carlson fished on a mate’s boat yesterday for a 120kg stripe from 3.  He was also on board Diversion with Garry Holt earlier in this week when James again potentially broke his own pending 3kg striped marlin record with a fish weighing in a 63.5kg. Update: I heard that James caught a 2kg pending Australian record at 62kg yesterday.

Sydney

• Updated: Rob tells me that Ambition tagged a 140kg black and raised a few others while Hoodlum raised 5 small stripes but couldn’t convert and Blue Illusion got a 110kg stripe as well.

Port Macquarie

• Port Macquarie’s Golden Lure Tournament is over for another year and while I don’t have the official tournament results yet, I do know that Iona 2 took out the Capture section. Day 3 was cancelled due to the weather but Day 4 went ahead and Adam says they fought an estimated 600lb blue for 3 and half hours before losing the fish right beside the boat an hour after stop fishing and more than 11 miles over the edge.  Adam reported they raised 10 blues altogether in the 4 days they fished (including Ladies/Juniors Day). Congrats to the team!

Gold Coast

• Plenty of action on the Gold Coast yesterday with a few big blues still being caught and encountered. Capt. Ross McCubbin on Lucky Strike says he heard of 7 or 8 fish tagged yesterday alone. Capt. Ross put Gerry from Canada onto her first marlin, a 220kg blue (485lbs) which gave her a tough 1 hour fight on 130. They also had a couple more shots on blues and caught a nice dolphin fish for dinner.
• Conor Lynch also reported from on board Lynch Mob yesterday. They fought a big blue for an hour and a half before eventually getting it alongside for the release and put the fish at 800lbs+ with a short measurement of 10ft 8 for angler Andrew. They also caught an estimated 80kg mako ending the day with 2-2-2.
• Vince on Barco tells me they went 1 from 1 on Friday and 1 from 3 yesterday (blue marlin). Vince also said yesterday afternoon’s fish was another definitely bigger than the Gold Coast industry average.
• Craig Summerville’s Tsunami is likewise plugging away and added another blue in the 100kg range (220lb) yesterday and I heard that Andrew Morley’s Express tagged one as well. That’s five..!

Sunshine Coast

• Only the one encounter reported from the Sunshine Coast so far with MGFC boat Akoya going 1-1-0 off Cape Moreton on Friday with a blue on a midday bite.

A Gold Coast fishing update from Surfers Paradise GSFC members fishing on Wednesday as well as some fantastic photos from Anthony Goulding (who was along to work the deck and document the trip in photos).

The new owners of Num Nuts have successfully christened the 40 Precision with a 2-2-2 on blue marlin on Wednesday.  Club president Mat Stehmann tells me that the fish were approximately 100kg each for both first time anglers Ben Timmis and Drew Gessner.  They also raised another that didn’t eat.

Another club boat Gemma 3 also tagged one and Hoodlum also went 2-1-1.

Beautiful photos Anthony – the conditions look spectacular!

Chris Caron’s 850lb black marlin on Castille III tagged during the Lizard Island Black Marlin Classic. This tag has yet to pop up and is still a contender in the great marlin race! Photo with thanks to Tara Manners.

To give you a bit of background/reminder: Mr. Peter Teakle sponsored five satellite tags to be deployed during the Lizard Island tournament.  The idea was to track the movements of these great fish over a period of  up 120 days (which is the maximum time before the tags pop up, although they can pop up prematurely).  The Lizard Island BMC Race was the result a challenge made by Bob Lowe’s Lizard Island GFC team during the 2011 HIBT in Hawaii where the claim was made that a giant black marlin would out-swim a giant blue. And so, they’ve set out to prove it with four of the five tags deployed during the tournament, and one the week after.

On December 21, the first tag popped up and started relaying information to the team at Stanford University in the US who are monitoring the tags.  The fish was an estimated 900lb black marlin tagged for angler Andrey Grigoriev on board Moana and popped up nearly 500kms (267nm) east of where it was tagged.

This past week, two more tags have popped up. On January 8, the tag from angler Phil Scott on Reelistic with Capt. Brad Craft’s also popped up. The estimated 250lb fish had traveled approximately 620kms (334nm) north to take the lead from Andrey’s fish. But the lead was short-lived. The next day, another tag popped up, this one belonging to the fish tagged by angler Bill Borkan on boat Castille III with Capt. Dean Beech.  The estimated 900lb fish has traveled an amazing 5073km (2,729nm) east in just shy of three months! (120nm east of Pheonix Island which is north east of Fiji and north of Samoa!) What an amazing result–and there are still two more to come!

As far as I can tell, Bill’s black marlin has well out-traveled all six of the 10 tagged blue marlin from the HIBT putting the black marlin in front!!  It’s not over yet, but the Hawaiian blues have a lot of catching up to do. It’s not Peru, but hey, its on its way!

With thanks to the information from the Stanford University team and the Great Marlin Race website: http://greatmarlinrace.org

An update from the Gold Coast GFC: Due to the magnificent run of blue marlin fishing off the Gold Coast the Light Tackle Masters which runs from 19 – 22 January have been extended to include a heavy tackle component. If you have any questions about the new format, please contact the club via their website www.gcgfc.com.au.  Entry forms are also available on the website.

• Capt. Adam Jordan and the team on board Iona 2 are currently fishing the Port Macquarie Goldent Lure comp, and after three days (including the Ladies’ and Juniors’ Day that was held yesterday) are currently in first place in both the Capture and Tag & Release sections.  In addition, their lady angler also took out the honors yesterday with a 250lb blue for Leeane Wilson!    Congrats guys – keep it up. There are two more days of fishing remaining (Thursday and Friday).

And a couple of catch up reports:

• Mooloolaba GFC VP Stephen Jensen tells me they fished in the same area as Akoya on Saturday off Cape Moreton on board his boat Animal for 1-1-1 blue marlin which was caught by wife Kellie.  Stephen says the fish was a good healthy 130kg. Congratulations Kellie!
• On the Gold Coast, Mat Stehmann tells me that Murphy’s Law has broken their hoodoo after going 10-10-0 the last 4 trips, over the weekend they went 3-2-2 on blues about 150kg and 100kg then next day 1-1-1 on another blue about the 120kg mark.  Also fishing a log they had alll sort of fun chaos going on with 4 way hook ups and also dropped another blue.  Mat says a lot of boats are out there fishing and most are getting at least one bite a day–the marlin fishing season is great so far!
• Belated Jan 4 report from Anthony Dimech who headed out with Denis Harsany on Big Banana wide off Sydney to look for a few marlin.  They started in 70 fathoms off the Bait Station and zig zagged south out to 200 fathoms but headed back into the shelf as it didn’t look any good out wider. 
In 150 fathoms, a nice blue ate the short corner and tore away line quickly in typical blue fashion, grey hounding away, then charging back. Ant had almost cleared the spread when hooks pulled. Bugger! Moving in towards 80-120fa they raised two stripes in the spread right on the tide change, and were able to release one shortly after.  Lines back in and they raised another stripe in 90fa, with a clean hook up the fish was released after a stubborn slug out on 15kg. They also raised another fish in the spread which looked at the long corner, short rigger, shotgun and then did the disappearing act, finishing with 5-3-2 for the day. They also saw three free jumpers.  As Anthony says, a pretty damn good day off Sydney!

Thank you to Nathan for the report!

The 3^rd Central Coast GFC Nautilus Marine Blue Water Classic was hosted over the  weekend from the Gosford Sailing Club with a total of 31 boats and 106 anglers entered – a good mix of both trailer boats and larger vessels.  Unfortunately the fishing was slower than previous years, despite the weeks leading up to the tourney having some of the best early seasons results in some time, and the lack of bait made finding the fish difficult.

Day 1, Saturday was a beautiful day on the water with only a late change in the arvo. There were 2 marlin captured, both on 10kg line by Blue Blooded and a third was tagged and released by the smallest boat in the field, a 17ft Haines V17L, Hard & Fast. On the shark front, Carnage tagged a small blue shark on 6kg and lost a mako after a short fight while Overtime tagged a small tiger shark. The only other shark for the weekend was a tagged tiger on Blood & Guts. There were also several striped tuna and kingfish tagged by juniors on the Saturday, as well as a couple small mahi mahi.

Day 2 Sunday proved to be a challenging day, as boats were greeted by 20knots+ north-easterly wind that came through at 9am and brought with it consistent 2-3m swells. Overtime managed to raise another 150kg+ mako without hookup and no other sharks were seen on the Sunday. Late in the afternoon Outlaw tagged a healthy blue marlin off Sydney. And that was it for the day with many boats returning early due to the weather.

The final results were:

CHAMPION MALE ADULT T&R – Andrew Griffin 10,000 pts “HARD AND FAST” – CCGFC

CHAMPION MALE ADULT CAPTURE – Josh Hodder 12,180.13 pts “BLUE BLOODED” – LMGFC

CHAMPION FEMALE ADULT T&R – Karen Perivolaris 2,300pts “OVERTIME” – CCGFC

HEAVIEST MARLIN ANGLER – Josh Hodder 75.70kg Stiped Marlin “BLUE BLOODED” – LMGFC

CHAMPION JUNIOR T&R – Carl Ayoub 1,266 pts “LOCKOUT” – BOTANY BAY GFC

CHAMPION JUNIOR OTHER GAME FISH T&R – 1,266 pts Carl Ayoub “LOCKOUT” – BOTANY BAY GFC

CHAMPION SMALL FRY T&R OVERALL – 310pts Spenser Hoye “HAULIN” – CCGFC

CHAMPION ANGLER OTHER GAME FISH T&R – 1,266pts – Carl Ayoub “LOCKOUT” – BOTANY BAY GFC

CHAMPION BOAT OVER 8METERS T&R – 10,000pts – “THE OUTLAW” PHGFC

CHAMPION BOAT OVER 8METERS CAPTURE – 24938.31pts – “BLUE BLOODED” – LMGFC

CHAMPION BOAT UNDER 8 METERS T&R – 10,000pts – “HARD AND FAST” – CCGFC