Valhalla Wins In A Clean Sweep

[Soxie.marlin]

Congratulations to Uncle Bat and the crew on the MIGHTY "Valhalla"

As one of my teachers on the broadbill when I was growing up and learning the ropes, I use to look up to Scotty "BAT" Taunton, hard to fill his shoes as he had fished with Ross and Glenn Hunter for many of years but I gave it my best shot !!

A few years ago he moved to Carins and now runs a boat repair company called "Bats boat works", he bought an old Haines Hunter and worked some BAT MAGIC on the boat it looks better then new and Named it "VALHALLA" !

Due to the poor weather up in far north Queensland The annual Norship Marine Light Tackle Slam game tournament was canceled and postphoned to the weekend that had just passed.

With weather still not friendly they pushed on out !

With results in for the tournament !!

Norship Marine Light Tackle Slam 2008

Champion Boat Overall

Champion Boat Under 7.5m

Champion Angler Billfish

First Billfish Tagged

BOAT: VALHALLA

SKIPPER: BAT

CREW: BEN WALKER (Champion Angler)

MARCUS BURTT

A huge Congratulations to him and I m sure he may of had one or two cold drink !!!

Great fishing !!!

Soxie

Edited September 10, 2008 by johnno

[schnepy]

Congratulations to Uncle Bat and the crew on the MIGHTY "Valhalla"

As one of my teachers on the broadbill when I was growing up and learning the ropes, I use to look up to Scotty "BAT" Taunton, hard to fill his shoes as he had fished with Ross and Glenn Hunter for many of years but I gave it my best shot !!

A few years ago he moved to Carins and now runs a boat repair company called "Bats boat works", he bought an old Haines Hunter and worked some BAT MAGIC on the boat it looks better then new and Named it "VALHALLA" !

Due to the poor weather up in far north Queensland The annual Norship Marine Light Tackle Slam game tournament was canceled and postphoned to the weekend that had just passed.

With weather still not friendly they pushed on out !

With results in for the tournament !!

Norship Marine Light Tackle Slam 2008

Champion Boat Overall

Champion Boat Under 7.5m

Champion Angler Billfish

First Billfish Tagged

BOAT: VALHALLA

SKIPPER: BAT

CREW: BEN WALKER (Champion Angler)

MARCUS BURTT

A huge Congratulations to him and I m sure he may of had one or two cold drink !!!

Great fishing !!!

Soxie

The mighty "VALHALLA" CONGRATULATIONS BAT im sure he would of had a few cold ones

[Ross Hunter]

Congratulations to Uncle Bat and the crew on the MIGHTY "Valhalla"

As one of my teachers on the broadbill when I was growing up and learning the ropes, I use to look up to Scotty "BAT" Taunton, hard to fill his shoes as he had fished with Ross and Glenn Hunter for many of years but I gave it my best shot !!

A few years ago he moved to Carins and now runs a boat repair company called "Bats boat works", he bought an old Haines Hunter and worked some BAT MAGIC on the boat it looks better then new and Named it "VALHALLA" !

Due to the poor weather up in far north Queensland The annual Norship Marine Light Tackle Slam game tournament was canceled and postphoned to the weekend that had just passed.

With weather still not friendly they pushed on out !

With results in for the tournament !!

Norship Marine Light Tackle Slam 2008

Champion Boat Overall

Champion Boat Under 7.5m

Champion Angler Billfish

First Billfish Tagged

BOAT: VALHALLA

SKIPPER: BAT

CREW: BEN WALKER (Champion Angler)

MARCUS BURTT

A huge Congratulations to him and I m sure he may of had one or two cold drink !!!

Great fishing !!!

Soxie

Soxie,

Over the years I have been blessed with many dedicated and loyal deckies. The Bat for 9 years and of course you for a decade and now The Emu. As you know well it can be a tough job for tough men, especially when your working the long days in the winter or beating through a 100 knot gale. Both you and Bat worked almost a decade on Broadbill and if references were needed I would simply say "You guys are the best on the coast".

I have congratulated the Bat for his clean sweep of the Cairns light tackle tournament, a tournament that I fished in the mid seventies on Sea Baby two with Laurie Woodbridge, Jack Erskine, Paul Whelan deckhand, Jonh Ashley and Jim and Ann Dalling. We won it twice and got runner up. Laurie was, back in that era a great inspiration to me and taught me lots in patience and dedication. Erco taught me how important natural baits are when catching marlin With that thought that tradition was involved I think that just made the Bat work harder for his win.

Here is a little background about the big fella...... You may get a smile out of.

LORD BARON BATSRUM THE THIRD,

IN CAPITULATION AND WAITING

As I said in a previous chapter, no-one should ever be called by his or her christened name, it's just not Australian, and everyone should have a nickname. The Bat christened me "Cogga", because of my busy activities on the forward and reverse sticks when we were chasing backwards a particularly hot marlin—the use of forward and reverse gears in combination with the throttles to chase a fish is always part of the excitement of marlin fishing for a skipper

A marlin of 120 kg on 8 kg line would spool an angler every time if the skipper did not back up, and back up pretty briskly. In the process of backing up a 40-ft boat on a fish, certain things need to be done to get the best performance out of the boat. One is using forward and reverse to change direction, never the steering wheel; the other is not to feed too much power to the props as this will cause what is called cavitation, or propeller slip.

Once cavitation happens, the boat loses a certain amount of efficiency and speed through the water, bearing in mind that they were never designed to go that way, blunt end first anyway. Care of the power and becoming totally familiar with the backing up process requires an enormous amount of gear-hanging from forward to reverse, maybe 50-plus times on one marlin. It takes some time to be really confident and proficient at this, it is fairly easy to drive over a fish and put him through the rotary gaffs, propellers. I have done that only once and it disappointed me so much. I had failed the job that I should be good at; that made me ensure that it never happened again.

The Bat was very impressed with the first time he experienced that backing up show. He came up with the "Cogga" nickname—someone who changes the cogs in a gearbox a lot, and the name stuck. We were out fishing one day in 1991. The Bat had finished his apprenticeship with Cummins, and both Glenn and he were working the deck on Broadbill. There was never a dull moment, the customers loved the boys, and the cockpit was a sea of laughter. We were yellowfin fishing, the fish were everywhere, and after putting a handful of pillies in the water we had 30 to 50 kilo fish coming from everywhere.

Big yellowfin were swimming to the transom, virtually being hand fed. The anglers were selecting the fish they would hook up, it was red-hot action, the stuff dreams are made of. The boys worked like navies gaffing, cleaning and icing fish, and the anglers begged for mercy from their stretched muscles and aching backs.

At about 4 pm we pulled up stumps, put out a brace of lures to troll home, and boys went about cleaning up—hosing the deck with detergent and an hour or more of scrubbing the decks that resembled a slaughter works were in store.

We trolled a mile or so and everybody was busy with their chores, when up came a striped marlin on the left rigger, we hooked him solid first hit. "On the left," I screamed, having sighted the huge dorsal. The big fish attacked the lure aggressively and we hooked him first strike, the reel screamed. We had to wake up an angler and tell him that a marlin was on. The anglers were so exhausted from their energy-draining exploits with the tuna, that they had hit the bunks and had fallen to sleep the moment the engines started. "Oh well! Once more into the breach" one shouted as he jumped in the chair and did battle with 120 kg of rampaging striped marlin that by this time was 300 metres over the horizon somewhere.

We tagged the fish after 40 minutes after some serious "Cogging". It was late, we had had a great day, so we really wanted to catch this fish and be done with it, and everyone was tired. It was now dark so we pulled in the gear and I sparked-up the twin Cummins and head in at 25 knots, the radar screen illuminated the darkened bridge.

The perfect end to a great day's fishing. Having shaken our anglers' hands and bid "Goodbye", we did a final tidy up then went home to bed, ready to do the same again to morrow.

Glenn had a date with his girl, so he took off first. The Bat and myself finish off the last bit of tidying over a beer, we were tired and enjoyed the 15 minutes relaxation before we to head home. The boat was quiet, just the lapping of the water could be heard, but the sound was not a familiar one. One thing that a skipper knows after spending half his life on a boat is an unfamiliar noise, or an engine surge, anything that is not normal.

I commented to The Bat that the water seemed to be coming more from "inside than the outside". We lifted up the engine bay to find that the stern gland was leaking badly. That can happen after a lot of serious backing up and is fixed simply by tightening the gland bolts. We have since installed drip-less seals, the best thing we ever did. However, on that night we were going to have to tighten the gland before we left. A diesel engine having been run at high revs. for an hour or so takes a long time to cool down so the engine room is extremely hot. In went Scott with spanners in hand; he hung almost vertical, tightening up the bolts on the gland.

He struggled in the heat and the confined space of the engine room as he tried to dodge the red-hot turbo and the equally scorching exhausts. His John Lennon look-alike glasses were fogged up as he emerged from the engine room, commenting that when he was in the inverted position, "I felt like a bloody' bat hanging in a bat cave!" as he wiped the sweat from his face. I laughed at the comment and the sight of this giant of a man as he emerged from the engine room and replied, "You're certainly a Big Bat!" To this day, many a person who has known The Bat for years could not tell you his real name.

Yes! The Bat was christened for life that night. Having accepted his new name, one day he told me that he thought that one stage of his family tree was involved with royalty. He had been drinking at the time, however his upbringing and his education at The Kings School and the fact that often commented while cutting up the pilchards in the transom that his headmaster at The Kings School had told him, "Taunton, you will never amount to anything if you don't pull your socks up". The Bat would look up at me on the bridge as he hacked away on the cutting board, covered in pilchards and slime, and say "How wrong was the silly bugger, I wish he could see me now?"

I always believed that maybe The Bat did have a little royal blood, so one day at sea we anointed him on the left shoulder with gaff handle as he knelt before Glenn and myself and the anglers in a most serious and dignified ceremony conducted amongst the fish slime and pilchards. "I name you in the name of the Queen "Lord Baron Batsrum The Third, in Capitulation and Waiting"………… sorta has a nice ring to it, I felt.

If The Bat sends anyone a letter, he will always sign it with that full title, which is fine for those who know him, but what about those who don't? There is sometimes too much seriousness in the world, but never when The Bat and I are together.

THE PHOTO

BROADBILL'S LONGEST SERVING ANGLER OF 20 YEARS.. MIKE ROWE CATCHES HIS 50TH MARLIN JIM DALLING MIKE ROWE AND THE BAT BESIDE HIM

[captainbat]

Thanks Rosscoe - what can I say - you taught me how to tie a hook, next January is 20 years, and look how much has happened, without you - it simply would not exist. The greatest gift I ever recieved....