Do I sense a celebration in the offing?

 

Yep it was a complete fishing.net team effort, me barking orders, Skoti winding and Arron driving the boat. We spent three hours trolling lures for the entire one base the rest of the time we were bottom fishing.

 

In total we ended up with day prizes for harbour snapper, gurnard, kahawai, tuna and marlin with Skoti's marlin going 3rd overall behind a 204kg blue caught at Tutukaka and a 120kg stripey  ... I cant remember where that was caught.

 

Skoti's dad did an awesome job as team support, cleaning our catch and getting fuel. Skoti's mum made cakes too .

 

It was a fantastic event for us and we were pretty tired yesterday after being one of the first boats in the water each day through the week we didn't launch until 6.30. A snapper fish at 20m gave us nothing flash so at 9ish we moved to 40m and put out a livey on the game rod.

 

A couple of little sharks gave itt some grief but nothing else. We only caught tiny snapper, some gurnard and average kahawai, so at 11 I made the call to tow some lures quickly before we had to go in.we were only planning to fish for an hour as I wanted to be crossing the bar at 1.00pm. We trolled out to 65m , along the swells for a bit then it was time to head back.

 

At 12.30 I heard the outrigger clip let go and was a little movement on the rod tip. No line was peeling out so I thought it was just a little tuna. Then this beak poked up out of the water and our peacefull day was turned into chaos for 5mins.

 

Arron and I cleared the gear and Skoti took the rod as planned and we settled into an hour and a half of Skoti working hard on the Penn 9/0. 

 

I have had that set for ages (I call it George) but it has never had a serious workout. In fact it sat in a box in my garage in a hundred pieces for a couple of years when I serviced it. It had always had a flaw in the side plate and when I took it apart that flaw turned out to be a broken housing. Anyway I got a new part eventually and put it back together.

 

George held together well as did Skoti. We kept the boat going slowly foward to keep Skoti in the corner opposite the skipper, doing our best to keep the rod in line with the fish. We saw it once in close in the first couple of minutes then it was 400m or so out before it started taking to the air, it soon worked out it couldn't fly too well and stayed out there for most of the fight. Skoti would gain line only to have the marlin take it all back out again. For some reason i cant write here what Skoti was saying when that happened .

 

We didn't have a gaff and we were hoping it would hang on til it was exhausted and getting it on board was pretty easy in the end although I was pretty tense and feeling the pressure knowing it was up to me to land the fish after Skoti had done all the hard work. Arron had a big job too, in the end we left it up to him to use his judgement on speed and boat direction as he was doing a good job and didn't need our input. UI've always wanted to leader a game fish and it was my time. I remember Dead Ant telling me what to do and other posts here on fishing.net were full of information.

 

Anyway that went to plan too and it was cheers, handshakes and Castlepoints all round, the first beers we had drank on the boat all tournament.

 

We were yahooing aplenty and when we called in the landed fish the radio went nuts with congratulations from everyone.

 

I've fished the CSFC One base for 4 years but always targetted the snapper gurnard and jkahawai sections and done well with that. It was Skoti's first time gamefishing and Arrons first big tournament.  They handled it very well with Arron falling victim to sea sickness on the 1st day obver the coast, some magic remedies sorted that out for the next two days and he was as good as gold.

 

Good team effort Skoti and Arron, well done. Thanks also to Skoti's dad who did an absolutely fantastic job keeping us going.

 

Best quotes 'you ******* **** I just wound all that ******* line in and now you're taking it all ******* back!!!' Normally a quiet and polite guy, Skoti couldn't contain himself  when the fish did a monster run when it was close to the boat.

 

Then when Skoti looked tired I tried to take his mind off the hurt so I told him it was now man versus beast and he was the beast. Pretty soon we had Skoti shouting 'I am the Beast!!!'  Funny stuff man.

 

Thanks to all the well wishers it's been a great 4 days. Skoti will hopefully have some pics to add when he gets sorted.

 

 

 

To land a marlin with an experianced crew is great.  1st timers!!!! just Awesome as...

my hat off to you's

 

very very outstanding effort... pics???  surely...