With Eddy Lawler’s Peak Sport Fishing among others constantly whetting our appetites with regard to the fine year-round fishing in Exmouth, it’s a highly attractive destination for any traveling angler.
Darwin’s Vision Sport Fishing’s Ben Currell trailered his barra punt to Exmouth (from Darwin!) and spent 3 days solo fishing off Exmouth over the Christmas period. He’s back on the east coast currently but will be back to have another go at it this month during the wet/off season in NT.
Here’s Ben’s report:
Day 1: First day saw a bit of action with 2 nice ones 350-400 teased up on the daisy chain then falling back and eating the riggers. One missed the hooks and got the other.
Day 2: Second day was a little quieter with just the one bite which converted into a standard 300-350lb fish.
Day 3: The 3rd day was active from the beginning. Ben converted a stripe around 50kg on the first pass then soon got another bite but unfortunately dropping a decent blue after the initial run. Not long after he had a pack of at least 4 stripes up, which turned into a 3 way hookup (remember solo!).
Ben says that he managed to freespool one of them into falling off and winding the lure away from the other so he could successfully land a 70kg fish.
He fished on again for one cold blue which couldn’t really be teased and lazily took a swipe at a lure. Deciding to pack it in and trolling in shallow,an unseen fish tripped the long rigger while he was pulling in the gear. I pulled it back for a fresh billswipe, and a couple seconds later the shotgun rigger sprung and the little Bonze Angel disappeared in a big hole.
The fish went on the massive aerial display we love blue marlin for, and Ben realised this fish was in a whole other class. After these initial antics the fish went deep and after about 2 hours on sunset and 20 attempts from different directions, he was able to plane the fish to the surface. After taking some measurements and a few photos he sent her on her way. At 3.1 short length she was by far the biggest Ben says that he’s taken from his barra punt and while its hard to get an accurate weight, he put it somewhere between 500-600lb.
He ended up the 3 days solo with 6-4-3 on blues and 5-4-2 on stripes! Awesome!
Photos above and below (click to enlarge)!
