Updates: Capt. Chad Mills’ Blue Lightning has been very busy again in the west fishing the Montebello Islands as usual this time of year.  Wife and crew Leah tells me that they released another 21 sails yesterday and 8 the day before taking their total to 66 since 3rd of July!

Also back up at Cairns, Jo, Ray and Pete fishing on Tagzin on Saturday went 2-1-0. Pete said that the water colour at wide grounds was good, but bait thin and scattered. Micro fish, the first couldn’t choke down a garfish!

2018 Broome Billfish Classic

While the official report is yet to come, let’s stop and consider the fishing over at Broome over the past week. Broome FC Vice President Wes Franks tells me that over 500 fish (mostly sails) were tagged during the tournament.  That’s for a field of 17 boat.  17 boats, 500 fish – an average of 29 per boat. That’s some seriously good fishing!

Hearing these results from Wes prompted me to look back over reports that we’ve had on the blog since I started doing this as a comparison. I thought to myself that its a return to the “Hey Day” of fishing over there. But as these results show, its not a return, its an improvement! (Missing some stats not at hand at the moment..but I will try and fill in the gaps.)

The big difference being now compared to early comps which were Tag & Release, the tournament since 2017 has been ‘free release’.

Update: well its not 500 (never let a fisherman give you an accurate number!) but the final stats are out. Still certainly the best result in recent memory and amazing fishing!

NQ Light Tackle

Reports still coming in from the weekend that was a glamour couple of days on the water. Ryan Tivey fishing on his father’s boat Hook In put girlfriend Robyn onto her first black marlin on Saturday ending with a 3-3-1 unfortunately missing a morning double header of sails.

Ryan was back out on Sunday with a couple of mates for a larger model that took over an hour on the 10kg (pics at top).

Capt. Ross Finlayson’s Bounty Hunter has been plugging away and also found a fat inshore version on one of his trips this week on Wednesday (pic below).

And on the good ship Duyfken, Rhys more reports a black and a sail on Saturday on the Oyster grounds. Paul and Sharon Poulter also reported a 1 from 3 at the weekend on their boat Think Big.

Also arriving into port on Saturday from down south, Capt. Steve “Hoggy” Haygarth on Kestelle. Hoggy reports a sail off Dunk and a marlin off Noggin on the way up.

Reminder: Cairns Bluewater comp is on 15-18 August.

Meanwhile off Townsville club boats have also been converting a few with both Job Site and Silverback tagging sails on the weekend after Pulse kicked them off with an early black marlin tag on Saturday morning!

Reminder: Townville Billfish Challenge is also on 15-18 August.