Sunshine Coast:

For those asking as to the breakdown of fish caught in last weekend’s Sunshine Coast Classic – here they are:

23 boats and just over 73 anglers competed including 7 lady anglers and 1 junior male angler.

Day one started out squally and slowly improved; weather forecast was for ESE 10 – 15 and rising on Saturday afternoon.

Day 2 was a big improvement in the morning but a large swell remained and with the wind increasing in the afternoon, the seas came up again.

Non-Qualifiers included fish boated and declared non qualifiers, fish tagged & released as non qualifiers and fish presented for weighing that did not make line class including yellowfin tuna, mahimahi, wahoo, spanish mackeral and mackeral Tuna.

Great Marlin Race:

Overnight the news came in that the fourth fish satellite tagged during the 2011 Lizard Island Black Marlin Classic has popped up 2,325 nautical miles (4,306 km) east of where it was tagged. The is the second fish tagged by Capt. Dean Beech and the team on Castille III and now puts them in 1st and 2nd position. The 1st position fish was an estimated 900lb black tagged for angler Bill Borkan. This now 2nd place fish was an estimated 850lb black for angler Chris Caron and has traveled in an almost identical direction and just shy of the same distance.

The Lizard Island tagged black marlin are by far the leaders over the HIBT tagged blue marlin.

More information: http://greatmarlinrace.org/

And speaking of Castille III, Capt. Dean reports 2 blue marlin tags yesterday for his lady anglers on a Valentines Day trip out of the Gold Coast. The fish, which he put at 450 lbs and 220 lbs were both first marlins for the ladies. Castille III heads to Port Stephens for the rest of the season tomorrow.