A quick report from Ben from this year’s GCGFC Heavy Tackle Tournament held over the weekend:The Cabo Yachts & Bruce Lynton Prestige Automotive Blue Marlin Classic was relocated to the Runaway Bay Marina with great success — despite the weather which left many of the smaller boats in the fleet at the marina on Day 1.
On Day 1, Katie Ripper on Castille III quickly put points on the board with the first blue marlin tagged, followed by Richard Fletcher on Num Nuts, Barry Alty on Mistress and Carmen McCloy on Caboom.
Day 2 Castille III and Mistress added another each bringing them in first and second for the competition from the crew on Num Nuts who disqualified their fish, the first fish of Day 2 as it had become entangled in another line. Ocean Dream weighed a monster yellow fin tuna that tipped the scales at 44kg winning Eric Carruthers the heaviest other species trophy. There were also some other gamefish tipped the scales nicely at weigh in, including a 26kg dolphin fish for David Thompson on Num Nuts.And outside the competition, Perry sent me this picture of Vanessa and her pending Queensland record caught on Sunday and weighing in at 148kg on board Comocean. Congrats to Vanessa, Perry and Wombat!
John Anderson sent this picture of wife Jill with the first grander of 2010 (1104lb) caught in Hawaii last weekend.The fish ate a small bullet lure and took Jill 3 hours and 45 minutes to bring to the boat.
It was caught aboard the Marlin Magic with Capt. Jason Holtz (who has spent many years crewing on the reef) and Jason now has all granders under his belt (Pacific & Atlantic blues and Pacific Black).
Congratulations to both Jill and Jason and thanks to John for the details.
I have been hearing reports of some consistent late season fishing down south. On the sunshine coast, Smithy marked his 50th billfish last week on board
Triton IV - a great result. For the last few weeks a few more sails have come into the mix (9 sails Saturday the week before on
Ymer) and they have been picking up a few on the Gold Coast as well. At Port Stephens,
Calypso ‘s Capt. Tim Dean reports their cracker season is continuing with 7 from 8 stripes on Monday on
Born Free.
There’s been a bit of radio silence from me on the blog as we crossed around the tip of Australia out of phone range, on the way to Weipa to start Gulf Tours on the new KEKOA during the marlin off season (check the KEKOA site for barra fishing updates). We’ll be back in Townsville for the juvenile blacks in August and in Cairns for the big blacks again in September. In the meantime we can still expect a few SEQ blue marlin reports over the winter – follow BMFB on Twitter or Facebook as well.
It seems the fishing was
on for the Broken Bay tournament held last weekend (20-21 March). Capt. Daniel Carlson reports they fished on his father’s 35 Bertram
True Blue (4 stripes weighed plus 2 tagged) while
Little Audrey has some work done and took out third place in the Capture Division. 2nd was
Blue Blooded (4 stripes weighed) and
Outcast who won the category with 2 striped marlin, a black marlin and tiger shark weighed.
On the Tag & Release side, the action was red hot at the top of the leaderboard with the top three boats all finishing with 11 marlin tagged – Bite Me (9 stripes and 2 blacks) winning on count back from Born Free (10 stripes and 1 black) and Rivenge II (10 stripes and 1 black).
By my count there were approximately 160 marlin tagged and released and 31 captured in the two days of fishing.
(Apologies for the delayed report as we’ve been out of phone/internet range – we’re set to round the Cape at about 4pm this afternoon, the most northerly tip of Australia.)
Rhino has been putting his considerable photography and editing talents to work again compiling this photo montage to celebrate Capt. Adam’s son Bailey’s (Boof) first marlin.
While Capt. Adam and Capt. Trent are still getting into the fish on board Iona – last Sunday they raised 13 and caught 6: 4 black marlin and 2 striped marlin – it was on a fun day out on board Weapon with the Hyland’s this week that put Bailey onto his first. Congrats Bailey – to the first of many!
I’m heading to Cairns tomorrow to meet up with KEKOA which passed it first real test with flying colours yesterday. Capt. Luke decided to run north to get a head start on our trip around the Cape and out of the path of Tropical Cyclone Ului which threatened the North Queensland Coast between Ayr and Yeppoon yesterday (fortunately after crossing at the Whitsunday’s overnight as a Category 3 the communities seem to have faired very well considering – it was actually a bit of a fizzer here in Townsville!) Running at 25knots in 25knots downsea, Capt. Luke reported that she handles incredibly well (and just as the good as the 47, which we’d grown accustomed to.) You can see my photos from the boat test earlier in the week here.
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