This post was imported into WordPress from my old Black Marlin Fishing Blog website without any accompanying photos. If you’d like to see the original post, with the accompanying photographs, go to the original Black Marlin Fishing Blog site and navigate to the post using the archive navigation links on the right-hand-side.

Reel Chase headed out for Day 1 of the Port Stephens 2007 season and was greeted by a less than welcoming swell outside the headland. Luckily the seas died down during the day and the run home was much more comfortable. All great expectations however brought about by reports of some truly fantastic fishing at the famous fishing ground ‘the Car-park’ over the weekend just gone, failed to materialize.After watching a lot of boats, including the great percentage of trailer baits, do not much in the AM, we headed north for greener pastures. As luck would have it, this was the right move and when we stopped to jig bait on the only real patch we’d seen all day, the first of our three Striped Marlin ate the sinking rigger. Consequently most times we stopped to jig bait, which was very hard to come by, we had a bite.On the first strike of the day, Ross had his work cut out for him as the feisty 90kg spangled line-tangler took off. After a solid 20 minute slog, my trusty self managed to tag the beauty at the back of the boat. An hour later to the minute, our second fish was up for Michael – one half of a double-header, unfortunately one eluded us – and all lit up was again tagged at the back of the boat. Another hour later, another double header and again, this time after a bit more line juggling, number two jumped off but Steven’s stuck and gave us a good display of jumps at the back of the boat before it too was tagged.Shortly before nock-off time we raised a nice 300lb black but despite giving both our livies a good touch up, failed to eat. While we were looking to raise him again, we ended an exciting day with a bull Dolphin Fish which is going to be nice and tasty on someone’s table! Today’s fish in order of catching …. Tsunami was on the fish today as well releasing 3 blacks and two stripes for the day. The Hunter boys caught a couple of stripes each and the team on Square Bear managed another for their flyfisherman too. By the end of the day, most boats seemed to be fighting fish.