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First Marlin Trip Of The Season


aussie123

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On Tuesday Ted,myself and his 2 boys decided to head offshore for our first look for a Marlin this season.

We met at the ramp at 3am and launched the boat and headed to the South Passage Bar across a dead flat bay.

We met Shane and his crew just inside the bar and he followed us out through the Amity channel which was nice and calm.

We had around 4 hours to kill before the tide change so we decided to hit up the Sevens first to see if we could find a Wahoo first up.

We set the spread out just before the reef and headed off trolling around and over the reef but all we could find at first were rotten Mack Tuna.

Eventually we found the Yellowfin and then the 7 rods we had out all went off at the same time.

It was mayhem with fish going everywhere and Teds poor kids didn't know what rod to grab because they were all bending over with line screaming off them, lol

I grabbed a rod out of the holders and gave them one each and told them to fight them and just forget about the rest.

I grabbed a rod and got the fish to the boat as quickly as possible but I ended up pulling the hooks on the fish right at the motor.

The boys had an absolute ball seeing all the rods go off together like that and I think Ted was standing at the helm thinking WTF just happened, lol

Anyway we boated 4 Yellowfin, pulled the hooks on one and broke 2 off somehow although I do think at least one bust off may have been a Wahoo going by the speed the line was ripping off the reel.

We re rigged all the gear and decided we didn't want to do that again as we were out there to catch a Marlin so we made the decision to head south to our Marlin grounds and have a look around before the tide change.

We also knew there was little chance of being annoyed by Tuna down there.

We trolled around for quite a few hours and only missed 2 Marlin for the day.

The water was pretty crappy looking but there was fish in it, we just couldn't get them to strike a lure.

We ran across a large Manta Ray which had a good school of Cobia with it but we didn't bother chasing them as we wanted a Marlin.

We trolled passed the ray 4 times so we could watch the Cobes swimming around it which was pretty cool to see.

Once we came to the conclusion that we were going to struggle to raise a Marlin I decided to throw a cut bait at the Cobes as we trolled past them the next time but when we returned to the area we couldn't find the Manta Ray as a big game boat had actually driven right over it just before hand.

I think it eventually got sick of being buzzed by the boats and went deep,lol

About 2pm the North Easterly came away so we packed up and headed home with a nice feed of Yellowfin in the box and a bunch of fresh Mack Tuna for bait.

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When a school of yellow fin hit the adrenalin starts pumping. The kids will remember that for rest of their fishing time.they look pretty stoked with their efforts.

Seeing a Manta ray would be cool, just always something new to see up here.

The water I found the Marlin in was 25-26 degrees temperature range if it helps anyone.

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Thanks for the write-up. Well done. The last time we were out for yellowfin, all five rods went off at the same time. With only the two of us 70 year olds on the boat and being 100 km offshore, things got very hectic fast. We did manage to land three.

That same day we had four others on. All just about spooled us before being able to turn the boat around. There were some 50+ kg yellowfin around and figured that what they were. Guess we'll never know as they all got off.

Would have been nice to have a 3rd and even 4th person on board that day.

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Great write up of the action Lance, that would have been an insane few minutes!!!! Were all of the lures skirts? Geez Mark is going to be impressed with all that BLOOD on the floor!!!!!

Hey Ted, what make is your boat mate? Been researching plate boats and keeping an eye out for a good buy. Cheers.

We ran a mix of lures Kelvin

5 were surface lures,all Pakula's and I also ran 2 deep divers which had JigSkinz on them.

Ted's boat is a custom built Adams Marine from Hervey Bay.

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Nice report and well done guys that's a great day. Would love to come across some yellowfin one day, cool looking fish. How do they fight compared to longtail?

Heya Sam

They are probably comparable in fighting qualities when they are around the same size.

The main difference is when in the bay chasing longies you tend to use much smaller gear so the fight is much better.

Offshore we use game gear as we are mostly chasing Marlin, Wahoo or larger Yelowfin.

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