Hot Blue Marlin Bite, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

[Smithy]

Locally we are in the midst of an insane Blue Marlin bite that has been going for 3 weeks. It peaked last week with a Sunshine Coast Gamefish Club boat, a 37' Riviera called Slippery 1 tagging 11 from 24+ bites. I was out that day on Ymer the original 34' Black Watch which was a charter boat at Vanuatu and is now at Bribie Island. Amongst club boats alone and not counting privateers and charter boats young up and coming local decky/photographer Jeff Oates (Phill) following in the tradition of other Sunny Coast lads like Chris "Sharky" Miles (Tenacious), James Parker (Mauna Kea) and Rossy off Assegai has calculated there has 210 Blues positively hooked and 90 tagged since Wednesday alone. That is not counting tailing fish etc. seen by the boats which are that number x3. When we say tag locally it also means we actually tag them with fisheries tags for a capture to count.
As for lures I am down one Pakula Lumo Guru, 2 Wellsys Binatang #2s and a Pakula Sprocket after a hot day Friday. Tim "Billo" Billings is down one no-name brand Brett "Bugman" Bugg had a Blue Angel Zipper lose its skirt to one angry fish. Leaders need redoing on a few lures and the teaser reel needs some work. Lure wise for the weekend we lost 2 Marlin Industries and we were running a Tsunami God, a Moldcraft Bobby Brown and 2 Marlin Industries on the riggers.

The bite has co-incided with a local tournament, the Mooloolaba Billfish Bonanza. Only 14 boats fished it with 9 of those boats fishing what we call heavy tackle (24kg line class and up) Tournament stats were 141 strikes, 97 hook ups, 57 tags/captures....these included 51 blue marlin,4 black marlin and 2 Yellowfin. For us other species for weighing must exceed line class so these were 24+kg Yellowfin. There was also another boat out there yesterday not fishing the tournament that went 3 from 7..including 2 doubles (one double was a Blue and a Stripe). Fish are being raised in twos lots of times and some boats have even had 4 at a time up in the spread. The insane thing about the fishing it is all occuring off of Brisbane, the local capital of the state of Queensland. Brisbane is the home to 2 million people and if you include the region stretching from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast probably 3.5 million people. The Gold Coast which is 1 hour south is where Peter Pakula comes from. Brisbane has produced skippers the ilk of Bill and Muddy Edwards, the Fergusons, Sparrow Denham etc. etc.

Here are a few links to local forums on the bite with pictures. Some of the forums might allow you to use the pictures or at least view them on the links. Jeff would love to see his pics here I am sure. I am not up on all this stuff. I have a video snippet I am working on as well. Should be up soon.

http://www.fishseq.com/viewtopic.php...er=asc&start=0

http://www.ausfish.com.au/cgi-ausfis...2086;start=all

http://www.fishseq.com/viewtopic.php?t=52

http://www.ausfish.com.au/cgi-ausfis...num=1145672994

Explore these sites and there are plenty more top shots if you look at posts by me, Jeffo etc.

Here is what happened to us the last few days fishing on 100% with the owner John Renton and anglers me, Owen Hancox, John Longworth and Peter Tornabene. 100% is a Deep V 340 with twin 300 Yanmars, the new baby half sister of Ymer.

Day one, conditions rough to frightening. Set the lures in a squall and could only run into them going up and down. In about 220m and trolling to the Slippery spot from Friday when we took the second hookup of the Tournament which started at 7.30. I was driving setting up the sounder for deep water work as it was its first trip heavy tackle. We had 4x37kg stand up bent butt outfits out. Strike was about 8.05 and we tagged it at 8.22 for first fish of the tournament to Obi. I was having a Phatt time on the sticks in the big seas backing her down near 4m vertical ones. Had a quiet spell then the rot of the day before set in. Heaps of shots and hookups but no tags. Got the tag into 25kg+ Yellowfin, then shortly after a 8kg Mahi Mahi. 1 from 6 on Billfish.

Day two. Outside Edge and Laid Back leading on 4 each. Rot continued for us until tagging one at 11.35 to Pete, his first Blue and first heavy tackle fish. Conditions kept dropping out, we were marking fish on the sounder along with bait and we also saw freeswimmers and jumpers. Pulled a lot of fish of flying fish schools. Had a run of bad luck then had Ymer type session late in the day. Tagged a hot fish with me on the sticks again at 14.01 that we should get some good shots out of. It was on top the whole time and going mental. Dropped a couple then tagged one at 15.43. By now John had seen what his boat could do in reverse and we were into them with diesel smoke billowing, turbos whistling and props cavitatining. Good day on the water and nice run home. 3 from 11. Yeha still in the lead with Parksey's 40' BW making a charge on his own school of fish in another spot.

Day three. They bit better this day but the weather was crap. Would not have been out there for 2 of the days if no comp was on. I was on one that we tagged at 10:16. John was on the sticks for the best one we saw all weekend which was one about 180kg for Obi at 12:15. This fish was mental and still taking drag on us full speed into them in reverse with waves dumping in the cockpit and everyone totally saturated. Owen was on the sticks for Pete's third and the boat's third at 1:45. This was the smallest of 80-90kg. All the rest were 120-130kg. Got a 4kg odd Mahi Mahi then with 10 minutes to go and Longy on strike we had a tangle. The instant it was free we got a bite that peeled 10m. It came back surfing the swells like they did all weekend and had two goes at lures but drifted away and that was our weekend. 3 from 4 Monday and 7 tagged total.

Outside Edge won with 10 from 1st Class on 8 and us on 7.

Awesome 4 days on the water.

Pics to come hopefully.

Winning boat!

http://outsideedge.com.au/

[Smithy]

Only have 25 downloads so let me know when it runs out or can you host it here? 6 meg.

Language is colourful at the end! You have been warned.

http://beta.yousendit.com/transfer.p...05CBCD52DEE7CD