Broome Fishing Club 2014 Billfish Classic, Dampier marlin and Dampier Classic
Tackleworld Broome Fishing Club 2014 Billfish Classic Results
The Queenslanders were giving local teams a run for their money during the Broome Classic last week. Four Mooloolaba GFC members fished on board Billistic for the comp and ended up taking home the Champion Boat >7.5m trophy with MGFC angler Ryan McKinnon also taking out Champion Angler Overall. The team, made up of Ryan and Jim McKinnon, Tony Kemp and Ben Henderson found the fishing slower compared to previous years but there was still a total of 131 sailfish tagged (along with 13 marlin, full stats below) amongst the 16 boats fishing. Jim passes on his thanks to the committee for such a great professional tournament and to the vessel The Wench for taking out boat Champion Team Overall!
Official Results:
A total of 381 sailfish fish were raised resulting in 274 strikes, 196 hookups and 131 tags with a further 65 marlin raised, 34 strikes, 20 hookups and 13 tagged. As mentioned above, the numbers were down a little from previous years which is thought to be due to the vast amount of bait distributed across about 15nm from the Western Front to the North of the Peanut.
The Champion Boat Overall was The Wench finishing with 9000 points followed closely by Billistic on 8000 points. Champion Small Boat was team Game Razer on 6000 points. Champion angler was Ryan McKinnon with 3500 points on Billistic, followed by Luke Groen also with 3500 points on The Wench. Champion Female and Champion Senior went to Deb Whitcombe with 3000 points fishing on 3XL.
During the event there were a couple of outstanding marlin captures with 2 fish over 300kgs being tagged and released on 10kg tackle – both The Shag and Team Reve undertaking marathon battles to bring the fish alongside in the shallow waters of Broome.
Thanks to Jeff Cooper for the results!
Dampier Marlin / Dampier Classic
With the Dampier Classic kicking off today, competitors will be looking forward to getting amongst the marlin that have been reported in the leadup. Even when they are not ‘fishing’, the Blue Lightning Charters team go fishing enjoying a crew day (or few hours anyways) out on the water on Tuesday.
Capt. Chad Mills reports deckie Jake released his first billfish as an angler, a small black marlin before Chad handed the wheel over to dad Capt. Bill Mills who drove on a second black for Leah only a few minutes later. Chad said that the bait was balling up and looking promising for the Dampier Fishing Classic.
