Capt. Darren “Biggles” Haydon’s Bounty Hunter also reporting more good fishing. Biggs tells me they caught three Tuesday – 2 fat rats and a big one he called 950lbs. Yesterday they added two more small ones. Capt. Ross Finalyson on Top Shot also had another cracker of a day yesterday releasing 5 for the day.
On KEKOA with Capt. Luke Fallon we ended our trip yesterday into Cooktown for changeover with 8 in the four days of fishing with our guests from the Gold Coast. First fish was quickly followed yesterday by a double header with the smaller fish successfully released quickly, and the larger fish that Luke put at about 800lbs giving us quite the show before throwing the hook back at us as we got to the leader.
Capt. Tim Richardson’s Tradition also released two from three.
Gold Coast
The Gold Coast Billfish Shootout has been postponed to the weekend of 27-29 October. Hopefully the good fishing continues all the way through.
Ross McCubbin reports he fished on Dave Mcallums 31 Bertram Old School yesterday. Dave went 2 from 2 on blues at 220kg and 150kg. Ross said they also got two on Sunday as well. All other boats fishing yesterday had a few bites.
And report from Captain Simon Carosi on Assegai who has just done four days (to take their mind off the reef!) and getting two bites each day. They caught a 400 yesterday and jumped a 500 off after a million jumps. Simon said besides Ross, Graham McCloy also had 3 or 4 bites and that its been steady fishing and they’ve been getting some great short bites!
Exmouth Australian Junior Billfish Tournament
Thanks to Jeni Gates for the update! There were 27 junior anlgers and 11 boats that fished the Australian Junior Billfish Tournament on Saturday and Sunday. Some teams came from Perth and Melbourne to get out and enjoy the opportunity to catch a marlin or sailfish during the 2day event. Kids as young as 3 were entered and enjoyed learning about how to work as a team onboard to target billfish. Prizes were awarded for the first sailfish and marlin tagged daily and went to the following:
1st Sailfish Day 1– Jake Fitzgerald
1st Marlin Day 1- Zac Owens
1st Sailfish Day 2– Will Roche
1st Marlin Day 2- Jaxon Kabelka
Below Jett Worsteling and his first sailfish on On Strike.
There are 3 divisions of the teams that include juniors who are 11 or over, small-fry (under 11) and mixed. The winners were:
Champion Team Small Fry– Nail It with Zac Owens and Jake Owens
Champion Team Mixed- In Deep with Jake Fitzgerald, Jet Worsteling and Kalvin Gates
Champion Team Junior– Azura with Jesse Sutton and Will Roche
It was a tight finish with the runner up team for the mixed section (Sin Bin with Jaxon Kabelka and Lachlan Morton) tagging their fish to equal the points just eight minutes after team In Deep.
A massive thanks goes to all the sponsors, Home Hardware, Woodside, Turbine Services, Penn, Tackle World Exmouth, Bonze Lures and Eyre Rods. Also thanks to the organisers and crews who help make this event happen for the kids. Some crews don’t even have their own kids, but offered their boats to take kids out with their parents to learn about the methods, fun, team effort and tagging program that we have for billfishing. Every child that entered received a tournament shirt and if they didn’t win a trophy, they walked away with prizes, knowledge, knew skills, new friends and great memories. A big congratulations to all the kids that competed and got out for the two days to target these species. Book ahead for next year’s event that will be September 21-24, 2018 (long weekend for WA).
