April and it promise of big fish is living up to its reputation. The ‘Peter Goadby Memorial Tournament’ held off Sydney last week-end produced some great fish and as many frustrating moments. The boat ‘Rabbit’ took out the money with a  288 kilo Blue Marlin.   Also, Zorro won the tag and release tagging five Striped Marlin. There were lots of Striped Marlin up North, Yellowfin out wide and Sharks in shore.  As well there were Tigers , a couple of Mako’s one over 200 kilo’s,  Whalers and Blue sharks.

Saturday  dawned with perfect weather, was almost too good to be true, dead calm seas with virtually no swell and it didn’t change all day.  Reports from Friday told of an  aggregation of bait North of the ‘Bait Station’  with Striped Marlin in attendance. So at start of fishing those into Tag & Release headed North, those after the big Blue headed wide, both North and South and the shark fishermen set up around the shelf.

The results after the first day were of a couple of Blue Marlin weighed  the bigger going 176 Kg. , somewhere around 15 Striped Marlin tagged with quite a few lost and most interestingly quite a few Yellowfin tuna out wide. However, no Yellowfin were weighed since they were caught by those chasing the big Blue on heavy gear. Meantime the boat ‘Casey’ had hooked up onto  what they called a giant Yellowfin tuna which they unfortunately lost after five hours when the hook pulled. Those guys have caught a lot of fish so when they say giant it must have been giant. As a consolation they backed up on Sunday with a 189 kilo Blue Marlin.

Sunday wasn’t quite as friendly as Saturday  had been with a lumpy sea and the threat of Storms moving in from the South-East. As a result some of the boats out wide experienced some very nasty weather but fortunately it didn’t last too long.  Early in the day ‘Rabbit’ called in that they had taken a 3.3 metre  Blue Marlin, the money fish.

 

Sadly, the Striped Marlin had moved away from the ‘Bait Station’ but most boats that persisted out there and had a very tough day.

The official results from the tournament are available on the SGFC web site.  However the results do show that  Autumn is still the big fish time of year off Sydney so get out there while the weather holds.

Winter is coming.

Tight lines,
Ivan

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