I had a quick call and update from Broome GFC’s Jeff Cooper this morning. Jeff is fishing on board 3XL, who after some standout fishing on day 1, hold onto a narrow lead at the end of day 2. But the talk of day 2 fishing yesterday was not of the top of the leaderboard, which is mostly made up of sailfish T&R points, but rather of a very much larger than average black marlin tag and release.

Shane Minshull, on board the 5.9m ‘The Shag’, fought the fish on 10 kg for 4.5 hours before finally getting the tag in and with a short length 3.3m they are estimating the fish at around the the 350kg mark which is an amazing fish on the light tackle! (Photos below!)

Jeff told me that this fish was one of many (though mostly smaller) blacks that made their way into the spread yesterday. And while they are calling day 2 for a quieter day fishing, they expect it to only get better from here on in for the final three days.

Narrowly behind the 3XL team on the leaderboard are Karratha’s The Wench, Billistic, Makaira and Team Dare.

The stats so far are 135 sails raised for 50 tags and 13 marlin raised and converted to 4 tags.  Great fishing as always!