• A report from Caz Martin and the recent Cairns Bluewater Billfish Touranament on 18-22 August. Hosted at the fabulous Fitzroy Island in 2010, 19 boats and 61 anglers boats anchored/rafted up and partied the nights away after cease fishing.  For the tournament, 12 billfish were tagged (10 sailfish, 1 black marlin, 1 striped marlin). Seems like last year, the juvenile black marlin have been scarce, while the big black marlin have already arrived!
• Also fishing his way up from the Gold Coast to Cairns for the start of the season, Capt. Tim Richardson on Tradition went two from three sails fishing from Nara to Stanley Reef on Sunday.  That’s it for light tackle for Tradition now who will switch to heavy tackle for the rest of the trip up.

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• Its not even September, with a few weeks of light tackle fishing still ahead of us in the North, and we already have a report of our first big black marlin on the Reef north of Cairns.  Capt. Adam on Iona II yesterday reporting a 550lb black released at Escape Reef.  Doesn’t that get you excited!?!  Adam reports they had other shots too pulling the bait out of one and raising another as well.
  
  
• September is tournament month in Queensland.  The Mike Carney Billfish Challenge starts with the briefing this Friday night, the Norship Marine Light Tackle Slam starts at Yorkey’s Knob on the 10th, the 2010 Innisfail Billfish Tournament on Sept 24 and the Sunshine Coast GFC Spring Shootout on the 30th!  (More details in the tournament calendar.)
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Thank goodness for the west! With no reports from either of tournaments held in NQ over the weekend come in yet, Broome has come to the rescue once again.

• Jeff reports that things are heating up in Broome as they usually do at this time of year. Billistic caught 20 sails on Saturday, following on from 16 on Friday. Fish Broome Charters has also been in the action with a double digit day on Saturday.  Jeff went out Sunday with a bunch first timers managing to catch 8 from a progression of double hookups.  He found jigging for bait didn’t work too well though as every time the jig hooked up on bait there would be a bunch of sails marauding it back up to the surface   (UPDATE: Billistic (Broome Fishing Charters) has released 62 sails in the last 6 days!)

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• Well 14 TGFC boats searched high and low over the weekend club comp for the little black marlin, but alas only one sailfish was recorded for private Townsville boat Cool Change.  Although the weather really put it on for all, I hear the overnight bottom bashing went off!  Hopefully the marlin are just being a little ellusive and show up in time for the big tournament in September.
• Meanwhile, on Cool Runnings in Cairns, Jye reports they’ve been catching a lot of mackerel and tuna on their light tackle days out.  Lets see if the little black marlin show up for the Cairns BlueWater 6kg Billfish Tournament which starts with a briefing at Fitzroy Island tomorrow night and start fishing on Thursday.

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• Broome is firing again!  Jeff Cooper joined the guys on board Billistic Sunday to get some photos of the Woodside funded tagging program in operation.  And, they got right in the middle of the action with another double digit day, finding a huge mass of sails just north of the peanut. Multiple hook ups were the norm with pods of up to 9 sails marauding the teasers and running amok. Above is a pic of the chaos (great shot Jeff!). And the weather was great too!
• Word from Capt. Dean Beech on Castille III, who straight-lined through Cape Bowling Green to Townsville after three days fishing from Hamilton Island, raising two blacks on the way in.  With strong hints that TGFC are going to call their postponed Billfish Bonanza for this weekend, we look forward to more reports.  (I’m not even going to mention the ‘w’ word for fear of jinxing it!)

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