Part of the marlin fishing grand slam caught off Port Stephens on Flying Fisher yesterday

Lake Macquarie Big Fish Tournament

Starts today with some hot marlin fishing going on yesterday indicating this might be a good one!  Capt. Scotty Thorington’s Flying Fisher 1 had a grand slam day with 6 from 6 – 4 striped marlin, 1 blue marlin and 1 black marlin. Ben “Notso” Bright who joined Scotty for his annual Port Stephens cameo on the first day of their Port season yesterday tells me that The Force caught 5 and a few trailer boats caught a few as well.  On Flying Fisher they were switch baiting in the morning and trolled skip baits in the afternoon hooking up on their final fish 5 miles in on the way home.  Ben says there is a lot of life out there with flying fish, tunas etc.

54 odd boats are fishing the comp from today. Good luck to all who are competing!

Sunshine Coast Game Fishing Club Classic

Day 1 yesterday saw Reel Capture take the lead with 2 black marlin and 1 sailfish.  Other boats with fish on Day 1 include Out Quoting with a sailfish, No Name (yes that’s the boat name) with 2 blue marlin, Reelaxin with 1 blue marlin, Blue Reela with 1 blue marlin and Galaxy 2 with two black marlin.  A great start~!  Good luck to all again today and thanks Tony for the update!

Jess Sams Tournament in Ulladulla

Fishing began yesterday for Jess Sam at Ulladulla as well but I don’t have any reports yet (anyone?)

Cairns Marlin Season Footage

Jordan has finished the Cairns Giant Black Marlin fishing season 2011 highlights on board Castille III, you can check out Part 1, 2 and 3 here.  Likewise, I have finished our KEKOA season DVD and have uploaded three new highlight clips to YouTube here.

Tommy Wright in action on board Hot Shot.

63 boats competed over the three days of the tournament with good weather conditions prevailing as well as a solid run of fish.

As it had been pre-BluWater Classic during the Tollgates Tournament the weekend before, the best bite continued to north of the Tuross Canyons.  Overall there were 80 marlin tagged as well as 4 captured – the best capture a 132 kg blue marlin to Lee Duffield.

The most marlin tagged by a boat over 6.5m went to Mr Hooker with 9 fish. In second place was the team on Hot Shot with 8 fish.

The most marlin tagged by a boat under 6.5m went to Blue Yonder with 4 fish. The Heaviest Shark was a 184 kg tiger to Jason Sinclair. The Highest Point Scoring Male Angler was Paul Baker with 43,000 points. The Highest Point Scoring Female Angler was Belinda Hawke with 24000 points.

Junior Thomas Wright on Hot Shot scored 87,000 points to give him the Junior Award. The Runner Up Junior was Brock Lazaro with 77,500 points. The Small Fry prize went to Jackson Hatton with 10,000 points. Great to see the young anglers doing so well!!

Many boats are enjoying some great marlin fishing early in the season out of Bermagui – hopefully it continues!

Bermagui

• The tournament report is still to come but I heard that Mr. Hooker took out the three day event. One fish behind was the team on Hot Shot with their junior angler Tom Wright taking out Champion Junior Angler with 8 tags.

Port Stephens

• While the marlin fishing has been slower mid-week, the fishing fired up in time for the weekend once again. On Saturday, Calypso (with Capt. Ross Finlayson at the wheel) released five while Blue Illusion got three stipes and spearfish.  Fritto 1, braved the 25 knot North-Easters yesterday for a 2-2-2 on the first two baits that hit the water. Andy tells me there were  a lot less boats on the water due to the weather.  Brent Hancock’s Tacklworld is also reporting 5 for Seaka at the Carpark, including a marlin grand slam, and four for Shelby, while Brent and the team on Born Free fished further to the south for two good stripes.  Brad Curis on Ningaloo tells me the fishing has been pretty consistent since the start of the year with 1 or two a day, and more on the good days. He released an estimated 300lb blue marlin on their last trip out on Friday and a stripe the day before, with their best day fish the week before with 5 stripes.
• More record hunting is also going on for the crews of Diversion and Gunnrunner.  Lone Wolf also got in on the act with a pending Australian Small Fry Record for Nathan Plunket – a 72.6kg black marlin on 15kg line. That’s Nathan in the black visor – great going for the young fella!
  

Upcoming Tournaments

• The Jess Sams Tourny at Ulladulla, Lake Macquarie Big Fish Bonanza and the Sunshine Coast GFC Classic are all on this weekend. Check out the tournament calendar for more details.

The GCGFC Inc. Light Tackle Masters 2012 was held over the weekend with 36 boats, 151 anglers and crew tagging 19 marlin over the 3 days.

Jugs, skippered by Ross McCubbin cleaned up winning Champion Boat Overall, Champion Boat over 8m, Champion Boat Heavy Tackle, Champion Female (Danielle Caelli), & Champion Male (Ben Caelli) with 4 blue marlin tagged taking home a total prize pool in excess of $17K.  Additionally they have gained entry to the 2012 IGFA Offshore World Champion Event in Cabo San Lucas.

In the Light Tackle section, Fire Up skippered by Brett Smith took out Champion Boat Light Tackle with a huge number of other gamefish species tagged during the tournament.

Congratulations goes to all who competed in the adverse weather conditions!

Full tournament round-up:

The tournament committee made the right call to include a heavy tackle component in the competition in the leadup (with the small black marlin fishing on the inshore grounds slow again this year).  And the weather forecasters also got it right, unfortunately, with the conditions less than ideal for all three days of fishing.

Teams and boats from as far off as New Zealand, Coffs Harbour, Mooloolaba, Townsville as well as a good number from the Surfers Paradise club ensured that we all made many new friends and the social side on the dock was pleasant.  World-class, multimillion dollar boats such as Shaka, Kiwi, Mistress and Castille III were competing against trailer boats of all sizes, the smallest being Carona, a 5.4 metre vessel that toughed it out for all 3 days. (Update: Mick tells me the actual smallest boat of the comp was in fact the 5.2mtr Kevla Cat Team Garmin who slogged it out for the three days and tagged a blue marlin to just miss out on the Under 8m prize on countback.)

Day 1:  36 boats headed out into the 2 to 3 metre swells and some consistent strong wind, and despite the conditions Reel Screamer skippered by Scott Watson called in the first marlin only an hour after lines in, a nice blue on heavy tackle. Soon after they were hooked up again successfully tagging another blue.  Ross McCubbin skippering Jugs then got into the action with another 2 blues in 2 hours while Brett Alty skippering Mistress tagged one. The rough conditions saw many other hook-ups lost.  (Celebrations for the crew on Reel Screamer unfortunately did not last long when it was discovered that their leader lengths were too long and both fish were disqualified.)

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Some marlin fishing reports from the weekend on the southern NSW coast:

Bateman’s Bay:

The Tollgate Classic is over for another year. The weather was kind and there were a few fish around to be caught for the 50 odd boats entered (though the marlin fishing over the tournament was slower than recent years overall). Travis, on deck of BBGAC president Dennis Lucardie’s boat Hardaraddit, tells me they took out the tournament with 7 striped marlin tags as well as Champion Angler for Brian Schofield and Champion Female for Denis’ daughter Tegan.

Young Brock Lazzaro from Bermagui fished on Mr Hooker and took out Champion Junior Angler with 2 striped marlin tagged. Most fish were caught south around the Tuross Canyons which should be good for the Bermagui Bluewater Classic this weekend.

Onsite weighed a 256kg blue marlin on the Saturday and a few boats finished the tournament with two marlin tags. Travis says another Bermagui boat Panlicker had a shot at the runner-up trophy but failed to hand in their third tag card on the last day.

I also heard the smallfry and junior anglers had a great time and were very competitive tagging their striped tuna and received compliments on their radio skill from the sked master!   Thanks to Travis and Gail for the reports!

Read on after the jump for the full results.

Bermagui:

Fishing with Capt. Ian “Wobbles” Ford on Hot Shot, Dave tells me they had a good weekend with an estimated 80kg striped marlin for Sharon Garbutt on 10kg, as well as a 75kg striped marlin for 13 year-old Michael on 8kg.  With Wobbles at the wheel and Dave on the deck, 11 year-old Tyler Wright also caught his first marlin at 66.8kg on 15.

The Bermagui Bluewater Classic is this weekend.

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