Another weekend, so more great marlin fishing from along the coast including a few tournaments (full reports still to come in). I’m still getting reports coming in so read on for a quick recap of the action (with more detail to come later) as well as some catch up photos from last week:

• The Gold Coast Light & Heavy Tackle Masters finished with cease fishing at 3pm yesterday and local super-Capt. Ross McCubbin came out on top overall and in the big boat class with 4 blue marlin. Ross was at the wheel of the 51 Riviera Jugs.  Three other boats including Capt. Bretty Alty on Mistress tagged two each. More to come.
• Central Coast NSW: Rod Findlay tells me they had some great fishing on Saturday on Murrifin less than 2 miles off North Head (in 40 fathoms between Barrenjoey Head & North Head). Rod said they started the day in 80 fathoms, raising a couple but not switching, but headed in close when they heard Broken Bay GFC boat Shakara were fighting the third of their four striped marlin for the day.  Within minutes of arriving, they switched a 70kg black on 15 kg, later adding a 70kg stripe from a double header (missing the second, a bigger striped est at 100kg) and finished with 5-3-2 for the day.

  Ron Jacobs tells me other Broken Bay GFC boats who were fishing Central Zone on the weekend also had some good results with Avanti going 2 from 4 (including a blue marlin), Ron on Shakara with their 4, and Sirrocco with 3.

• By Sunday, the bite had moved south with no fish raised in the same area.  Rod tells me it seemed like Bandit Reef was the place to be (in close north of Wollongong) and he heard of a few boats catching 3 and 4 fish there yesterday.
• NSW tourneys held on the weekend include the Botany Bay GFC Bill Heyward Tournament and the Bateman’s Bay Tollgate Classic (reporst to come).
• Catch up photos from the North Queensland: Capt. Brett Goetze on Reel Chase sent me these pics from their trip out to Holmes Reef (ex-Port Douglas last weekend). Brett reports they fished via the seamount for two blue marlin on the way out and another on the way in (to 500lbs) as well as yellowfin tuna to 50kg.

Port Stephens

• Capt. Tim Dean on Calypso followed up on his 5 striped marlin day on Sunday with another 5 in an hour of fishing on Monday. Tim says the first bite didn’t come until 1pm, and they had 5 on the board by 2pm!

Cairns

• Meanwhile there are still a few around during the marlin fishing ‘off’ season in Cairns (as well as plenty of the usual sportfish).  Capt. Brett on Reel Chase went out to Holmes Reef via the seamount and caught two blue marlin on the way out (including one about 500lbs) and another on the way back as well as some nice yellowfin to 50kg on the seamount.  Brett says a highlight of the trip was deckhand Lachy jumping in with the bigger blue for around 5 minutes filming it while it was around 10m below the surface.



• On KEKOA with Capt. Luke we did an overnight trip out wide yesterday for two small blues (photo above). Capt. Sparra on Square Bear released a sailfish at Channel and Capt. Ross on Top Shot got a 200lb black on the edge earlier in the week.

Port Macquarie


Scott Baker on Iona 2 with his 182.4kg blue marlin

The BlueWater Legal Port Macquarie Tournament Report:

• Steve reports great fishing had by all with some 28 boats and 140 anglers enjoying the fishing. Some 125 fished were hooked but not too many actually made it to the boat. The majority of fish were blue marlin with only 2 black & 3 stripe marlin being reported.  Steve says the fish must of been on steroids with some long fights recorded – one angler spent better than 5 hours on a stripe marlin on 15 Kg line to win the T&R on the bell on the last day.

  Champion Boat T&R Good or Good PMGFC
  Champion Angler T&R Ryan Frost    PMGFC
  Champion Boat Capture   Iona 2  LMGFC
  Champion Angler Capture T&R Scot Baker PMGFC
  Champion Female T&R & Capture Michelle Evans  PMGFC
  Champion Junior T&R Harriet Crowley PMGFC
  (Harriet is from Dubbo & fishes on her Dad’s boat Backed Up2)
  Champion Small Fry Connon Brown on his Dad’s Boat Rarely Inn

  Steve says he spoke to Dave Finn while he was up here and he believes we can change port to the blue marlin capital (as Adam Jordan on Iona he was only 11ms past the shelf on a estimated 600lb blue thats closer than the shelf at Port Stephens.) Watch out Port Stephens!
  Thanks Steve for the report and Mike Kane for the photo!

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