Townsville Big Blacks

There be giants in Townsville too!  O’Brien Boats’ father and son duo Peter and Leigh O’Brien on OB1 had another successful weekend out fishing off Myrmidon Reef this weekend. They released three fish, one that Leigh put right up there at 950lbs+ for angler Adam McFarland (above) as well as two others at the other end of the scale at 100lbs each. Myrmidon certainly has been producing for boats that have been able to take advantage of the weather window to get out there (Myrmidon is 68nm from Townsville).  The Gough, Kane, Davidson trio’s boat Silverback  was also out there releasing a nice fish about 700lbs as well.

Cairns Giant Black Marlin Season

It’s not only about size on the reef yesterday with fish showing up in numbers as well. Capt. Brett Goetze on Reel Chase had his best day as captain releasing 6 from 6 including a double header – quite hectic with only the single angler!  Brett says the biggest was about 650lbs and there were a couple of 400lb-ers as well as smaller fish. What a great day!

Nearby, another Brett, this time Capt. Brett Thomas on Gorilla released 4 as well which was another great day for his marlin novices. While down on the Bank, Capt. Corey Hard on Askari released three black marlin to 400lbs too from a few other boats who didn’t see much at all.

On board Kanahoee with Capt. Chris “Sharky” Miles and team, Amanda Thompson was fishing up her trip for 2013 yesterday. Bevan says that late in the day, they got the bite they had been waiting for all season on the big bait – a really nice fish that was way up there.  Another 3 hour fight later, the line unfortunately broke – but hats off to Amanda for an amazing effort all week. Besides fighting at least three record beating fish, she also released a host of smaller models up to 800lbs.

Report just in from Capt. Adam Jordan on Iona 2 who are out there somewhere and out of range. Adams says they had a top day yesterday with two big fish from five bites that he put at 950lbs and right up there on the mark. The also jumped another nice fish about 800lbs off at the back of the boat and had the bite out of another big one. On Saturday, they released one at 500lbs and raised another around the same size.

Another catch up report from Capt. Ashley Matthew’s Sea Fever with a big fish at Number 1 Ribbon on Friday. Ash says this fish (above) was right up there and while they saw plenty of others the only other conversion for them was one about 100lbs.

Capt. Tim Richardson’s team on Tradition also had another great day in the middle yesterday releasing two solid fish at 700 and 800lbs (photo above).  The boys are getting a workout!  And on Capt. Luke Fallon’s KEKOA, we had the fun day too with the bite out of the big fish soon after lines in, and then waiting for the afternoon bite for two more fish released for Art including a fantastic effort for him on the 50lb standup outfit fighting a 500lb fish that took us out to sea at sunset and gave some spectacular greyhounding jumps across the surface before getting on the leader for release (photo below). It was the perfect pitch to the fish that came up on the teaser and ate right at the back of the boat.

Broome Fires Still

More great fishing in Broome, Capt. Chris Nisbet on Billistic tells me he has seen large numbers of sails and small marlin as well. The last 10 days have produced 328-115-94 fish with 17 being marlin. Extraordinary stats!

Exmouth & the Betta Billfish Bonanza

As usual at this time of year, Exmouth in the west is firing as well. The Betta Billfish Bonanza has begun and the first two days of results are below courtesy of Exmouth GFC.

As for the tournament itself, Day 1 saw 27 billfish tagged made up of 9 black marlin, 2 striped marlin, 1 blue marlin and 15 sailfish.

Leading boat is Pelagic Hooker with 6 tags followed by Billshit and On Strike with 3 tags each.

On Day 2, Pelagic Hooker once again blitzed the fleet accounting for 19 sailfish tags alone!  The final stats for the day were 50 fish tagged made up of 41 sailfish, 2 black marlin, 4 striped marlin and 3 blue marlin.

Weipa Sails and Little (little!) Blacks too!

Ben “Notso” Bright reports a run of little black marlin in Weipa in addition to the sails. Yesterday he went 2 from 5 on the little fish both approximately 115cm long.  Ben says there were a couple of other club boats out over the weekend as well with mixed results although all were seeing plenty of fish.  Ben says it pretty great to see the marlin showing up in what they consider a sail-fishery!