Fishing Reports

As I sit and write this, we are currently half way between Cairns and Tahiti, steaming the boat to new grounds, a new adventure and hopefully some big fish. However it has only just dawned on me that we have broken one of the biggest rules of fishing (if ever there was a rule, this should be it) 1. Never leave fish to find fish! So we have done just that. We are heading to French Polynesia in search of large blue marlin and what ever else we can find. We plan to fish remote locations such as the Austral Islands, Tuamotu Atolls and the Marquesas. If you don’t already know there are some great stories about very large blue marlin that come from Tahiti and we are going in search of them. Our last trip in Cairns this year was a cracker. Lots of big fish, long fights, spectacular bites, broken lines, and anglers! The weather was glorious as well! But 4 days after returning from that trip, we set sail looking for more….fish….and a little adventure. Anyway, here is what we steamed away from. We fished for two weeks out of cairns this season, as we were still finishing off some maintenance issue’s from our repaint in Brisbane. The first trip began on the 4th November and we had only been on the Linden Bank for about an hour when we let go our first black marlin for the season. A very respectful 750lber, that wanted to be the first fish to carve its mark in our brand new sparkling paint job….the boys had it on the leader for some big jumps up the side of the boat…phew….no scratches. The next 5 days was spent fishing around Lizard Island and yielded another 7 fish, with 2 of those fish over 700lb and on the very last day, we missed the fish we had been looking for. We had a spectacular bite on the big bait, only to pull the hook out of her 10 minutes later. Trip 2 began on the 16th of November and the first afternoon was spent fishing Euston Light. We raised one small fish here and spent the night at Flyn reef. Our plan for the trip was to head out wide and have a bit of a scout around the places we have done well in over the past few years and work our way north to where there was reports of some good tuna. GeoEye showed some interesting currents, and eddies, so the plan was to fish the edges of this and catch up with the tuna. Tuesday the 17th started early for us as we began trolling off the reef and around the green zones. We had just rounded the corner when we marked our first target on the sonar. We trolled 3 lures and the boys had a bait ready to pitch when we sighted a fish. The mark was roughly 350 meters away, and about 53 meters down. Perfect, as we approached the mark, the center lure is retrieved and a bait slid back in its place. However the boys had used the wrong rod and the bait was now skipping center field and a lot shorter then we would have liked. I drove the boat over the mark and a couple of our guests came up to the tower to see what was going on. I explained the sonar and our programme that we were using to hopefully catch this fish. Of course no one believed I had actually marked a marlin on the sonar, driven over to it, put one bait in the water, and was going to get a bite. I casually informed them, that yes, it was that simple! But after the first pass with no bite, I assured them that sometimes it takes two passes. But then nothing on the 2nd, or third. Now I was in danger of making a fool of myself, and my confidence waned. “it must be a shark, I exclaimed! it can be hard to tell the difference between marlin and sharks, yep, this looks like a shark, and we should have had a bite by now, if it was a marlin”. Unconvinced, I do another turn to catch back up with this mysterious fish, who is now along way from the original pass, muttering that we will just be totally sure and do one more pass. The fourth and final time I dragged our skipping tuna past the nose of this fish, I noticed a slight flash of blue, as a fish around 950lb climbed from the depths and inhaled our bait right behind the boat. It was one of the best bites the crew and I had ever witnessed. Head, shoulders, back out of the water in a going away bite that began directly under the bait. The beauty about this technique is that, 1. only one bait is used at a time, 2. Every one is ready to see one of the best parts of marlin fishing. The bite. So, on the first morning of our trip, with flat calm conditions, we were hooked up to a giant black marlin, and who said you couldn’t catch these fish in the morning. It was 10.30am, and at 3pm we had let her go. Later that afternoon we marked another and on the first pass(as what is supposed to happen) another 900lb fish, with cameras rolling, inhales the bait in copy book fashion. A short fight later, we let our 2nd fish over 900lb go for the day, thanks to our Furuno side scanning sonar. We finished the day with a 400lb blue marlin that didn’t need a bait, and came out of nowhere to eat a lure. 3 from 3, with two big fish, now that fishing. The other great aspect of fishing out wide is the lack of sharks. The first fight that went 4 hours would almost certainly not gone the distance in on the edge. At the end of the day with the weather so good, we turned the engines off and drifted for the night. I had planned to be a good 50nm further north, but the fishing had hampered progress, but this was a good thing! Now I was wondering whether or not to proceed north, or stay. We had traveled about 15 miles between the bites, and there was nothing to suggest there should be fish in this area, So do we fish here tomorrow, or keep moving?? Do we leave fish to find fish? I rationalized that the fish were through out the coral sea, and we had stumbled across them today with the help of GeoEye fish finding maps and our Furuno electronics. The next day we set off again. Except today finished with a score of. Raised 2, Bites 2, Caught 0. We had a bite from another decent fish and missed it, then hooked a big fish and fought her into the night that ended with snapped line after 8 hours, and we still hadn’t reached the tuna! The 8 hour fight was an incredible show of endurance and strength on the fish’s behalf, it was with out a doubt the toughest fish I have fought, that never let up, relentlessly pulling full drag on the 130lb rod for over 4 hours. The next morning we still had another 20 miles to reach the tuna, and another 2 boats were already in front of us. They had reach the schools of big eye and yellow fin with reports of the sea being black with 40 kilo tuna. Again, we never made it that far, The first bite was a nice one around 800lb’s. We pulled the hook from this fish, but as we wound the bait in, the fish followed, and the boys quickly got the bait skipping again to have the fish wolf it down, with barely the double from the rod tip. Again another great start to the day, thanks to Furuno! Next we stumbled across a small patch of tuna marking down deep and marked a couple of fish. A 250lber first up, then a fish that we fed 2 baits to that failed to hook up. We continued to fish this more southern spot and had a quick swim with a whale shark. While we looked for another suitable swimming candidate, the left rigger powed out so hard, I thought the rigger had broken. At the time I had been looking down and talking to one of the boys on deck, only to catch the hole in the water. No one saw this fish, so we all watched in anticipation as the line slowly angled up. Lure caught fish generally behave differently then bait hooked, and this was no exception as it peeled line from the 130. In the distance it broke the water in half jump. It was a nice fish around 1000lbs. This was the only jump the fish made, and after coming close to getting it on the leader in the first 20 minutes, it sounded. We increased drag and attempted to entice the fish to the surface, but to no avail. We just kept loosing line! After about half an hour, we were certain the fish had died, but so soon was uncommon, but every attempt to get a better line angle failed and just reduced the amount of line on the spool. We were now down to a little over half our line left. I positioned the boat over the fish and our angler employed one of my favourite tricks. The “buster cogs” method, where the angler, with a gloved left hand grabs the line up near the first guide and as he pulls the line down onto the reel, he turns the handle. We did this for 4 hours, slowly and painfully the dead fish was winched to the boat. Now this is not how I would have liked it. I would much prefer a dramatic battle at boat side, with crewman wincing in pain from the wire wrapped around their hands, the fish jumping with water filling the cockpit and cameras getting wet, flying gaffs, boat in hot pursuit, the lot! But it wasn’t to be. The fish died so the only thing to do was to weigh it and as we struggled to pull it through the transom door, it was still a massive achievement, especially for our angler who was totally responsible for getting the enormous fish to the boat. There was no fancy driving or flash crew work. It was all the angler. Slogging it out just like the old days with a stationary boat. The next morning, back at escape reef the fish went 1058lbs. Our first black marlin we have weighed over a grand. This makes the Ultimate Lady one of the few, if not the only boat to weigh a pacific blue marlin and black marlin over a grand. Needless to say, the angler, our guests, and crew all reveled in that capture. We headed back out to the tuna for a day then back south along the same rumb line. The last three days of the trip we caught 7 fish, from 200 to 1000lbs. We also broke line on another nice one around 800lb. For the trip we caught 13 fish. 2 over a grand, 2 over 900lb. 1 over 800lb and a whole bunch of small fish. With out a doubt the best weeks fishing I have had in Cairns, and anywhere for that matter. …..and we are leaving! Good Fishing!