Marlin delivers epic
LOCAL schoolteacher Billy Green can partially thank an ill-forecast wind for his “bucket list” catch last weekend.
Green and his mates were among hundreds of anglers in the region caught out by unanticipated stiff southwesterly winds on Saturday, a blow that whipped up seas in quick time and compromised the safety of anglers fishing well offshore.
“That was us, at the reef already and fishing when the winds came up,” Green said.
Several coral trout had already hit the deck of Green’s 4.6m tinny before the mates thought returning to the port of Lucinda would be better sooner rather than later.
“The trip was rough and we were sick of being bashed and about halfway back we couldn’t go any faster, we threw a teaser out, caught a tuna pretty quickly and then fed the skirted pusher (lure) back out again,” Green recalled. “It wouldn’t have been set to more than 10 seconds and I was on … I hooked a marlin.”
Green couldn’t believe his luck and described the battle as an epic one, and difficult in the rough seas.
“We nearly took a couple of waves over the boat trying to get it in,” Green said.
“We had no gloves but with my mates Aidan and Brad heaving the fish into the boat; we got it landed.”
WITH
EDDIE RIDDLE
Green was pumped, but celebrated only briefly before measuring his black marlin capture at 230cm overall length and 180cm from the lower jaw to the fork of the tail.
“That puts the marlin at about 50kg and it was even better to see it swim away after we got it back in the water and trailed it beside the boat while it recovered,” he said.
“I’ve relived the moment a thousand times and it’s catches like this that makes me love fishing!”
Proud Dad
Salamander Reef was kind to my eldest boy Coen last Friday when he celebrated his 15th birthday with a haul of spanish mackerel.
The sea was kind and the fish were hungry when Coen trolled baits at the popular hotspot to fool a pigeon-pair catch of the revered table and sport fish while his youngest brother Finn chipped in with a mackerel of his own.
Sharks were a near certain issue after Condon angler Keith Harveyson had a large mackerel bitten in half just a couple of days earlier, yet the apex predators were nowhere to be seen as Coen battled a 12kg fish to the boat and shortly after, another of similar size.
Finn shook a small queenfish free of the hooks before setting another bait and claiming his very first mackerel of a bit over a metre long.
With a hat trick of mackerel