Season Update .....

Back to Cooktown today after a few days off in Cairns having just finished fishing with long time American anglers Norm Ennis and Bill Pickett.    We caught 7 marlin over the 9 days with them up to 350lbs.   No big ones this year for Norm.

We started the season in mid September off Cooktown fishing North and the middle fairly sluggishly getting the odd bite here and there.    5 days of fly fishing with regular angler Mr Ishikawa saw us raise 9 fish over the 5 days.

Our next 6 days with Tony Hedley and John from the States we caught 4 fish with largest est approx 450lbs.  The following 7 days early October was with anglers from Adelaide, Troy and Zane and although tough fishing at times it did produce a big fish estimated 950lbs.    Total of 4 fish caught for the week with a stack of missed bites over a frustrating couple of days.

With the Lizard Island tournament coming up we're hoping the fish come on the bite for a good week of fishing.

Heading North .....

On our way to Cooktown to start the 2012 season with first charter on Friday.   There's been a few fish around already, so looking forward to gettting out there and amongst it  ........ let's hope it's a good one!   

Plenty of juvenile black marlin ......

Over the last couple of months the little black marlin have been quite dominant up and down the coast all the way from the Whitsundays to Cairns and possibly further North.

There's been some great action for not just the game boats but plenty of trailer boats have been catching the juvenile marlin and not having to travel too far to find them.

We did four days fly fishing last week with Mr Ishikawa but the 25 to 30 knot winds on the first couple of days made for challenging fly fishing conditions.     We were looking for big ones on the outside but with the rough water we fished a day and a half on the inside of the reef, teasing 7 small blacks, catching 1 and getting many other bites on the large fly, suited to the bigger offshore blacks that Ishi likes to fish for.

The boat is currently out of the water for its annual antfoul and other minor jobs, back in the water again Friday.

With a few more light tackle days before starting our heavy tackle season, I'm hoping the little blacks are still biting.

Cairns Autumn Fishing - Good Season Ahead

Arrived back in Cairns in the beginning of April after some great fishing in Port Stephens although it did slow up considerably the last couple of weeks I was there.

We are now fishing light tackle on the grounds off Cairns where there has been good mixed bags of fish with big Spanish mackerel, yellowfin tuna, wahoo and sailfish.   There have been reports of baby blacks all along the Eastern Queensland coast from Mooloolabah to Cairns.  This certainly bodes well for a good light tackle season ahead as over the years if the juvenile blacks showed up in late April / May it followed with good winter marlin fishing.

We went popper casting for GT's on Saturday - great action, plenty of bites with  5 captured along with bluefin trevally, Spanish mackerel and red bass.  We did get a couple of bites out of possibly the biggest GT I've ever seen though unfortunately didn't secure a good hookup -  though  I now know where he lives, so with abit of luck we'll get another shot at it.

Brian's big Spanish mackerel

& nice wahoo !!

GT Fishing early May

Feb / March - Port Stephens

Been a while since our last report as we've  been fishing almost every day and slack on the computer side of things .

Some excellent fishing was had over the last week of Feb with our best day being 8 from 8 with 4 blacks and 4 striped.  Mark Codner from the US fished with us for 2 days at the end of Feb and 1st of March, we managed 7 bites for the 2 days and caught 4 with Mark catching his first black marlin which gave us a good run around and a memorable fight.

Todd Fechner also fulfilled his bucket list "fish" catching his first striped marlin.

The fishing has slowed somewhat through the early part of March with changing conditions every day - strong currents, green water and the bulk of the bait dispersing and becoming more spread out.

We fished the "carpark" yesterday and things definitely look on the improve, with all boats there getting a couple of shots and marking some good bait along with the marlin.  Water temp is around 26 degrees with some good blue marlin in it along with some fat striped marlin around the 200-230lbs mark.

We managed to catch 3 over the last 4 days out of the 5 raised with a nice blue marlin caught for Bill yesterday at an est 300lbs.

Luhrs Shootout Tournament

The fishing still remains excellent from Port Stephens with catches of 5 & 6 marlin a day not uncommon in the leadup to the Luhrs Shootout Tournament  held over the weekend. 

The tournament hosted 90 boats with the team on  Gunrunner taking out first place with 13 fish, followed by The Force with 10 fish and we took 3rd place with 9 fish.   Boats that fished for blue marlin on the shelf and beyond had plenty of bites and some nice blues were caught, with the biggest weighing in at 230kg.

With the tournament now over and the crowd dying down mid week, we're looking forward to the next 3 days of fishing before the Interclub Tournament kicks off on the weekend.

Good weekend of fishing ....

We caught 3 striped marlin for the trip with the Campbell's - 2 on our last day of fishing.  The following day (Saturday) we caught 5 striped marlin on a shared charter day, having seen 8 or 9 with 1 black marlin caught yesterday first up in the morning from 4 raised.