It sounds like exciting fishing for the Luhrs Billfish Shootout held last weekend, 20-21 February at Port Stephens, with 114 marlin tagged in the two days fishing. Askari was first out of the blocks at the ‘Carpark’ with the first tag in the first hour of fishing, but it was local private boat Born Free who quickly took control with two quick tags (a black and a stripe) soon after and ending the day in the lead with 7. Not too far behind was Capt. Tim Dean on Calypso with 5 followed by KAOS and Diversion.

On day 2, Born Free released their first fish of the day within 12 minutes of start fishing, leaving the rest of the field with a lot of work to do to catch up. And they did, with Calypso giving them a thrilling run for their 10K prize money finishing just one fish behind at cease fishing at 3pm. Born Free took the winners cheque with 11 marlin tagged, Calypso finished second with 10 and KAOS in third.

Unfortunately on the capture side, no qualifying fish were weighed and so the awards went unclaimed (and will jackpot next year!) Shayne Wilson on The Force fought a blue for 5 hours on 24kg before the fish won its freedom when the trace broke and Cool Runnings broke a rod 2 hours into the fight on another nice blue!

Congratulations to all who competed. Luhrs will be back to sponsor the event again next year which will be held 19-20 February 2011. Thank you to Australian Luhrs Distributor Tony Poole for the report.

The Interclub starts tomorrow – can’t wait to hear how it all goes. Wishing we were there but someone decided to get married instead ;-) Thanks to all for your congratulations!