I currently over in tassie during my winters studying Naval architecture/ ocean engineering at the Australian maritime college. And while going crazy reading the reports on here after only fishing till mid feb in NZ I have to fight the marlin bug with something so I take my little 4m poly craft out off tassie to try and catch some SBT and on friday me and my little brother went out and got a nice fish here is a report I did for a tassie fishing forum

Well it began the night before with the usual fishing preparation of packing and re-fuelling the boat, after just 4 hours of sleep it was a 3am start, we were on the road by 10 past, we arrived at fortescue bay at half past 4, and we began to load the boat, and got ready to launch. We were then on the water by 5 and we began by steaming out but we stopped short in our track by a large sea and a lot of slamming, so lures went in, it was decided to head straight for the hippolyte’s. About 45min in the lumpy sea, the excitement began when we had a visual of the bird life on the north side of the rock, no other boats to be seen, with all the bird life we decided to make a few laps around the big hippo.

The start of our third lap around the big hippo we decide to see what was happening at little hippo, still no other boats to be seen, we just went over the sub-merged rock and BANG, the 30W screaming, we were on!, about 6.20 am. I had thought the x-rap just got snagged on the rock at first but only a few moments later and my mind had changed the rod was up to strike and the weight loaded up but did not slow down… Wa hooo! Gus took the rod with only a gimbal but no harness .From this point on I attempted to try and murder the gear box and throttle all the bilge pumps were trying to keep up as waves broke into the boat as I backedup into the sea as Gus kept the weight on. As we got closer the seals started to follow the boat, so we free spooled the reel. After it taking about 200m of line in a couple of second we put the drag back up and I chased the line down (planning) as angus reeled like nuts to retrieve the slack belly. After about 20min the fish stale mated us and I started pulling as many different angles as I could to get the fish back up to the surface after 5min of this he shot straight back up and we again chased him down on the plan. The seal begin to swim around again and we both agreed if we didn’t get it soon the seals would be having a yummy breakfast, so we sunset’ed the reel and gus got stuck in as I slowly did circles the double came up I graved the leader didn’t have time to put my gloves on and took some raps and god he pulled back with the boat surging I was going to let go but gus yelled at me to hold on as the line had become tangled around the tip. So I pulled on it and hoped like hell the hooks and split rings held together, the fish arced around and then we saw how big the fish was, F^&*(*&^%%K!!! . Angus stuck the gaff in to it(a $12.00 k-mart gaff), and we quickly hauled the fish onboard at 6.55 am ish. Knocked it on the head and celebration texts phone calls began waking most people up from a Good Friday sleep in, as we realised what we had just done! 



Video of last couple of seconds on the leader
http://s752.photobucket.com/albums/xx169/stmoritz/lastseconds.mp4.html

The lures were set once again, but with the seas building and the boat considerably lower in the water thanks to the extra passenger, we decided to head back, the reality still unbelievable, thankfully we found someone that would weigh it(thanks leo for teeing it up and Mark at TCoT for weighing it!), after taking a few hundred photos we arrived at the boat ramp at fortescue bay at 9:30am. 




We left fortescue bay for Lauderdale to weigh the fish, once we arrived at Lauderdale the fish was hauled up off the tree tipping the scales at 105.15kg!!! We were shocked, that’s bigger than Gus’ biggest marlin of 104.6kg also caught on 15. Upon further information we found it had trumped the state and Australian record by 20+kgs! And a possible World record. We found out we were 2kg off the mens world record on 15kg and were ineligible for Australian and state records, due to being only members of a GFTSFC a non GFAA affiliated club. But none of that mattered we had just landed a mammoth, and were on top of the world, once we got home we did some further research on records and discovered the junior all tackle world record was 98.64kg, this was the cherry on the cake not only had we caught a 100kg tuna on 15, but a Pending World Record. Today was indeed a ‘GOOD’ Friday. After a big clean up, and a lot of filleting the reality hit us once again. We had just caught a 100kg world record tuna. 


note: that is the flag of our fishing club in NZ the Bay of islands Swordfish Club

Upon the breaking town of the tuna we cut open the stomach, and found it full with nothing but leather jacket! We refuelled the tank today and discovered that only $16.52 worth of petrol was used that day!! I bet that’s another record for catching a jumbo?

Well done - awesome effort and result!

a fish of a lifetime caught in a small boat in rough conditions. That is a great effort guys.

Congrats and good on you. One item ticked off your bucket list. That is a very impressive effort and a great fish. Good luck for the world record.

Wow you guys must be buzzing nice to see you smoked him on 30pound  how long was the fight. 

Great read, outstanding result. Nice looking fish. hope you get your WR.

Awesome,go the small boats

Brady Rowe wrote: Wow you guys must be buzzing nice to see you smoked him on 30pound  how long was the fight.  I want one of those this winter !!!

Magnificent guys, a credit to you. I would be extremely happy with a model like that on 80lb. Fire an email off to Tim or Kim at the Bluewater magazine. I'm sure they would be keen to do a story on it.