The Marlin Have Arrived

Over the last four days over 50 marlin have been caught out of the Bay of Islands and about a third of that number have been Blues! The water temperature has been over 20 C and with perfect weather, the scene has been set for some outstanding fishing.

“The fish are in-between the Nine Pin and Cape Brett” according to Chris Brittain, skipper of Tagit. They are rounding up big schools of anchovies into meatballs and those skippers who have been able to drop baits into these feeding frenzies have sometimes been able to hook several fish. “It’s like the old days,” Chris said, with a chuckle.

The Bay of Islands Swordfish club board has made impressive reading with up to 14 billfish a day, including a couple of blues up around the 250kg mark and a stripey over 160kg.

Three catches are worthy of special note. On Sunday the 4^th February, Andrew Hargen aged 8, has made a claim for a smallfry world record with a stripped marlin on 24kg line, weighing 117.4kg off Te Ariki Nui skipped by Jason Wootton. NB: Three other members of the Hargen Family caught marlin over the weekend as well.

The next two catches were by the same angler, this time Alice Rowe, another junior. On Sunday Alice landed a Blue Marlin weighing 174.8kg on 37kg line, almost 30kg more than the existing world junior record. While an official claim must be made and ratified before the record is given, it is still an awesome effort.

But as fate would have it, the record was only to last a day, as on Monday she did it again! This time a slightly bigger blue marlin was caught and weighed in at 191.6 kg on 37 kg line. Two world records in two days! What does she do for an encore?

Just down the coast in Tutukaka, the gamefishing has also been hot. During the Kilwell Sports Tutukaka Nauti-Gals Contest held on the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th a total of 31 billfish were landed between 89 teams. The biggest fish was a 196.6kg blue caught by Annette McFarlane.

The yellowfin tuna action has still been slow up and down the coast, especially around Whakatane where it would normally be red hot at this time of year. However, Northland charter skippers have found them in good numbers just to the north east of North Cape. Water temperature charts show a big patch of warmer water off the cape and yellowfin in the 40-50kg class have been jumping all over trolled lures in that region.

The King bank is starting to produce the odd billfish but it is apparently still a bit cold on the Middlesex bank for the marlin to be there in consistent numbers. Lets hope the warm water pushes down further and this bite lasts a while longer.

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