Billfish Shootout - report & results

[REEF MAGIC CHARTERS]

Hi all,

Day one saw us punching 43 miles north into a 20knot north easter which blew hard all day. With $20,000 dollars for the biggest marlin over 150kg and a full house of 80 boats and 365 anglers fishing we had decided that we would fish for blues so out went all the big blue marlin lures - within 10 minutes we hooked a solid striped around the 95kg mark on 37kg and Damien made swift work getting him to the boat for Steve to put a tag in him. 30 minutes later we hooked a solid fish only to have him bust us off... bugger. We then hooked another solid striped and with Mark on the rod we had another tag in, in 15 minutes. We managed to jump off another striped later in the day. Unfortunately we couldn't find the blue we were after....

Tantrum hooked a solid blue around the 200kg mark but managed to pull the hooks boatside & another boat weighed a blue that went 159kg only later to have it disqualified for the leader being to long. A mistake that proved to be very costly!!!

Calypso was having a great day with 8 tags for the day and a very healthy lead heading into day 2 but had us in the top 5 for tag and release.

Day 2 saw perfect conditions and saw us head wide of the middle ground and again we managed to find stripes and jumped 2 off in the morning session. There were good numbers of blues being caught all around the 150kg mark on the shelf but we were well wide. We then made a decision if we were going to win this comp we needed a new plan... we trolled up some striped tuna where we had some birds and rigged them as skip baits. We worked the area for two hours then started heading back towards the shelf. The boys on Day Release had a nice blue on and when boatside it went 2450mm (or around 145kg) so they unselfishly tagged and released a beautiful fish. Unfortunately we didn't manage to raise the fish we were after.

Game fish base sent out a severe storm warning and the fleet got hammered by a severe electrical storm on the way home and i can say im glad we were aboard Reef Magic and not a small trailer boat as the front hit with a 40 knot south westerly and torrential rain,thunder & lightning.

Congratulations to the tag & release winner Calypso with 10 fish followed by Frito & Viking 2 - we just missed out on the top 10... maybe we should have had a shot at the stripes but that's life...

The $20,000 dollars went to the boys aboard Seaka who weighed a 157kg blue marlin.... now you can see why the boys on day 1 would be kicking them selves.

Champion Female junior was Kiara McMahon and Champion Male junior was Connor Craven. The Peter Goadby award was won by "Game Plan".

There were a total of 97 marlin tagged for the two days which i think was a great result considering it was a full moon!!

The fishing is getting better quickly and we have 4 charters in a row booked starting this Friday and we will be looking forward to having a shot at the stripes. Anyway good luck to anyone getting out there this week.

If you would like to catch a marlin now is the time. We still have a few weekends free and plenty of mid week days available if anyone is interested in a charter give Damien a call on 0407113349 and he can give you the available dates.

Cheers

Mike

[kinggame]

Thanks for the report mate

Cheers

[fishmaniac]

Thanks for the report and well done on scoring some marlin!

[Jack Jeff]

THANKS FOR THE REPORT MATE

CHEERS

FISHFINDER707