Greetings from the Gulf of Carpentaria!  (Quick observation – it’s quite dry where we are, is the east coast getting all the rain?)

• Stuart tells me that over the weekend the Annual Southern Zone Interclub was held – all clubs between Shellharbour in the north down to Eden in the south participate. Each club is allowed to fish from their home port and reports back to their own weigh station each afternoon.

  I’m not sure how the other clubs ended up, but it seems like the hot spot for the competition was the waters off Batemans Bay. Stuart reports that boats which braved the very ordinary conditions were rewarded with lots of action. Team Opportunatee, made up of skipper Brett O’Connor, daughter Zoe (junior) and mates Ken Blackney and Mark Britton had their A-game on and tagged an impressive 14 striped marlin over the 2 days. Day 1 they released four and then stormed home on Day 2 with 10 tags! Other Batemans Bay GFC club boats fishing reported raising up to 10 fish each day but only converting 2-3 into tags in the tough weather conditions.

  An honourable mention goes to smallfry angler Willis Purvis fishing aboard his uncle’s boat Shotgun skippered by Matt Britton who tagged his very first marlin. Congratulations to Matt and the rest of Batemans Bay GFC who took out top honours again this year!

• The bite off Bermagui is still very good. Last week Capt. Ian “Wobbles” Ford on Hot Shot released 5 from 11 and on Saturday Capt. Dave Cassar on Slammer added two more to his season thus far – two from two and back in by 10am!
• Adding to yesterdays report of 3 from 4 on Cabolito off Cape Moreton on Sunday, a report from Aaron who fished wide of Point Lookout on Loche Ahtong’s 2600 Powercat Cheetah on Saturday.  They released one blue approx 180kg off a tuna ‘slick’ in 300m of water (they ended up one from three on the blues). But it was the tuna action that was off the charts! Aarons says they found a bunch of healthy yellowfin tuna schools in 500-700m of water (with a couple mega wahoo stealing a few lures in amongst the chaos).  Aaron says the tunas were hitting lures, swivels, the leader touching the water – anything!  A result of the action, they are now down 2 Zacattak Sprockets in Lumo and an Evil Joe Yee Apollo.  Aaron says its the best tuna aggregation he has seen off Brisbane in 20 years of heavy tackle. The main tuna were 4-8kg with a couple larger models missing the single hook rigged lures.  Some of the fish that porpoised on the lures looked around 25kg.
• Anyone with any reports from the AIBT or Gamex so far over in WA? Can’t wait to hear how they are going over there.