queensland April 2010 So Far

[Smithy]

Gold Coast Heavy Tackle Tournament

April 18th, 2010

This is the link to all my past fishing reports.

/>http://blackfin15.googlepages.com/reports

I fished on Barry Alty's 50' Don Senior designed, NZ built timber game boat "The Mistress" for this one. We tagged a 120kg blue marlin on day one and a 150kg blue marlin on day two to come in second and get Barry the owner Champion Male Angler. We were beaten on time by Mark Ripper's 46' Obrien "Castille III" skippered by Dean Beech with Katie Ripper in the chair and Tinker on the trace. They also caught two blue marlin but beat us on time. 15 boats competed and only 6 blue marlin were tagged but some nice yellowfin tuna and mahi mahi also hit the scales in the other species category.

Jason Full Day Trip

April 12th, 2010

Jason was joined by friends Graham and Fiona for this one. We left the river mouth and found the wind blowing NW. I wanted to head north for the day so this meant doing a beach run to Noosa to keep things nice and calm. We cast at a few mack tuna schools along the way with Fiona picking one up. We put the minnows out to troll east to the area I wanted to fish. No go here so once I hit 40m I put the outriggers out and trolled some skirts off them for some marlin and kept some minnows down the middle for some wahoo with the result a chopped off skirt due to a wahoo bite. The bait looked good but we took no hits so there was only one thing to do and that was to drop some livebaits down. I only got one out before it gave a couple of tugs like big bottom bashing bites. Eventually it was up and jumping and Jason was connected to his first sailfish. We got this fish and cut an old tag off. It was originally tagged by Outside Edge charters a few miles south back in 2006. We headed back to the same spot on the plotter and once again we didn't have to wait long before a black came up jumping. We fought this one but he didn't have a bill so no handle to hang onto and he popped off on the leader. We tried another spot on the way home but by now the SE change was through and we had a bit of a punch home which killed our fishing time and no further tuna schools were sighted.

Family Trip

April 11th, 2010

I took my girlfriend Julie-Anne out to catch her first decent gamefish this day. The mack tuna had been in plague proportions the day before and that is what I wanted to start her out on before attempting a marlin so I was fishing 6kg line but no-one told the marlin not to bite. Along for the trip was our Australian Koolie dog Keelie and my sister and her two children Cooper and Amy. Cooper hit the bunk after jigging some yakkas and that is where he stayed till we hit the boat ramp at the end of the day.

Jules knocked up having the onset of a cold so handed over to Susan to finish off the fish.

Not a bad morning though poor Keelie got seasick.

Dan & Rick Full Day Trip

April 10th, 2010

Dan and Rick were back for another round on the pelagics.

We started off with the pack fishing the All Ports tournament and only had a few mack tuna bites whilst watching one boat hook and fight a sailfish and Ymer catch a heap of mack tuna.

I headed off to where I was on the Friday. We started livebaiting but couldn't take a trick while boats all around hooked wahoo and marlin. We put the gear out for instant success with a mack tuna within 200m. Next up was a nice wahoo.

We got a couple of these before Dan' first black marlin jumped on.

We put the gear out again and this time Rick hooked up on a nice black but this one got off after about 5mins and a second series of jumps. We had a few more wahoo bites and ended up on a full skirt spread as the ice box was full of wahoo and we wanted to concentrate on the marlin. No further joy for us but while the hot bite lasted a few other boats were able to capitalise.

Mikey Sailfish Trip

April 9th, 2010

Mikey had yet to see a sailfish in the flesh let alone catch one but hearing of a good run of sails Johnno booked him in to come out with me for a morning half day whilst he was on school holidays. After too much running around the day before I decided to just stick to the grounds I knew even though the bait was nothing like it had been. This proved very effective as we had a very busy morning. The wind was much worse than forecast but we jigged up some nice livies and proceeded to drift them through the productive areas from the weeks before even though there were only scratches of bait here and there. We had about 3 mack tuna bites, 4 definate billfish bites and maybe another 4 that were either flipper bites or billfish bites so we were kept busy and got to fight two sailfish to the boat, one being a recapture. That Sailfish was tagged by Luna on the Easter Monday so it was only out for a few days.

Matt Full Day Trip

April 8th, 2010

Matt was my second most unluckiest customer for having trips cancelled due to weather but this time we were off on an okish forecast. Joining him was Hunter. We started off in on the close marlin grounds jigging bait and on the quest for a sailfish but the pillies were gone from the previous few days. We livebaited quite a few spots on any likely looking bait but were doing it tough. A last ditch spot that I knew held some decent spot was the next call and we didn't have to wait long with a good wahoo pouncing on the Rapala CD18 minnow on one of the 8kg outfits we were running.

Matt was next to hookup, also on a good wahoo.

Next bite and we were connected to a 60-70kg marlin which we got on the leader and not a bad effort for Hunter on 8kg line in 15-20knots of NE seabreeze.

Cameron Full Day Trip

April 7th, 2010

Cameron was my most unluckiest charter customer for having trips cancelled but we finally got him out on some good weather. He had been trying to come out with me since November two Novembers ago but every booked in trip had been cancelled due to bad weather. We started off on the marlin but there is a pool of fish out there that had to be shared amongst the fleet of boats fishing for them so on calm weather days there were too many boats and not enough fish to go around. We ended up with a black marlin released to Cameron but the boys came packing jigging gear so we headed off to chase some kingfish and amberjack.

Clinton's mate scooped the best kingy with this guy but a couple of good ones fell off and the boys also landed a few rats and some pearl perch.

Red, Steve & Ray Trip

April 2nd, 2010

The boys were booked in to do a full day trip but we knew a big SE change was coming so we were going to head off as soon as it became upfishable. They wanted to learn how I mackerel fished so that is how we started. Live bait was had to come by in close but we got enough to get started. It was slow fishing with one mackerel pro getting five or so bites beside us with a few of them tuna bites and another pro having not caught any mackerel at that stage so we went chasing the abundant mack tuna schools. About then the wind started and we knew it was going to be a shortened day but they all caught a couple of mack tuna each with some schools containing 5-6kg models and other schools just jelly bean size tuna.

Jim, Lim & Alvin Full Day Trip

April 1st, 2010

Jim was back with my unluckiest charter customer or recent times Alvin and his dad Lim. At the mouth of the river we waited for "Ymer" the 34' Black Watch that I tournament fish on and who were heading out the same time as us. We sat in their prop wash for a smooth ride out then went looking for bait on the grounds. We jigged bait pretty quickly then headed off to find the pilly schools. This we did watching "Ymer" hook and fight a sail then we were on ourselves with Jim hooked up to his first billfish.

A little while later Alvin was hooked up to a good size mack tuna he was very happy with while Lim battled seasickness again, even though the sea was calm. Sure enough Alvin's bad lucked continued and as we were fighting his sailfish a boat near us hooked up and the two sailfish crossed paths and Alvin's line came off second best.

With Easter approaching there was pressure to produce a feed of fish so we headed off to chase a spanish mackerel. We did no good on them but did scratch up this nice 4kg+ coral trout for Jim off the downrigger.

[RyanG45]

got some nice fish there mate and good pics of the marlin jumping

cheers ryan

[Do$tylz]

Jeez Smithy... you sure do turn on the goods for your customers well done mate.

[Keen-as-fisho]

Good going :woohoo: And some great action shots of the sail fish.

[ALO]

awesome pics man

[bay_basher]

look like fun!!

[cameronh]

Thanks again for a great day out Smithy, 12th time lucky.... Finally, but a black marlin made up for all the bad weather cancellations. Will definitely, try and make it out again in a month or so.

Cam

[Smithy]

Cameron,

some from my camera I just downloaded for you. I will e-mail you the high res to pass on.