A SEASON OF EXTREMES

In September it blew and blew. We arrived on the 9th after a quite pleasant 1000 nautical mile trip from the Gold Coast and then copped 10 days of 30 Knot winds.Then finally it came down to 20/25 Knots for the last 9days of the month.

In October it blew and blew. 20/25 knots for 20 odd days straight.Things finally came right the last week of October and with the exception of a couple of very ordinary days we had great weather for four weeks.

20/25 Knots isn`t all that bad but you get sick of the consistency and in a sense the monotony of it. Variation from 5/10 to 15/20 is the go.

So after a succession of wonderful weather over the last several seasons we copped extremes; fairly rough or pretty good; nothing much in the middle.

Fishing was the same,-- Extemes,---Very big fish or small fish,---nothing in the middle. We only caught one fish in the range between 400 and 800lb.
Everything else was either below 400lb or over 800lb !!

The average weight of the fish we caught was a staggering 538.6 lbs. This is our highest average ever. We tend to be a bit blase about this because we see so many big fish, however in most of the worlds Marlin fisheries one is very lucky to see a fish over 500lb let alone achieve an average weight in excess of that.

What is perhaps (hopefully) an indicator of things to come next year is a progression. Last year there were lots of 700 800 and 900lb fish but not many Granders. This year it was 800 900 and 1000lb plus.If i use optimistic logic the fish have all grown over the year which means that next year when these same fish come back they will all be bigger ??

Fishing was reasonable in late Sept and we were on about a fish a day.
Things slowed down in October and it was generally about a fish every 2 days.

Our first really nice fish for the month was an 800lber caught by Rich Schuelke.The fish was one of those beautifully proportioned ones that did all the right things. Rich did a great job in the chair after some late night tuituion the previous night and the fish was released in good shape and still going a million miles an hour.

The Lizard Island Tournament was fished 15 to 21 Oct and it was pretty tough. Overall 47 boats tagged 113 fish for the 7 days ( ie 2.4 fish per boat or 1 fish per 2.9 boat days ? ) We were fortunate enough to get 4 including a couple of really nice ones ( 850 & 900 ) for our South African Team of Ferdie, Braam and Andries. The best thing was that 2 of them were enough for us to take out the Daily prize on the last day so our Charter Team went away with some very nice Trophies.

The weather improved immediately after the Lizard and so did the fishing.
There was a hot bite at the bottom of Ribbon #10 and the fish were BIG

There were so many big fish around that we changed tactics and put out two big baits initially on circle hooks. Then we realised that we were seeing some really big fish so "J"s would be the go in case we found the mythical (but maybe not) "Big Julie". It worked because while ther still wasn`t quantity we were right into the quality.

On 25 Oct John Skogland of San Antonio TX in his first trip to the GBR got a beauty we estimated at 1050lbs.This at #4 Ribbon 5 minutes before we had to pull the lines to go in.? They say nice things happen to nice people and in the case of John and Veta it`s true.

We then had an unbeleivable run of fish. In succession;

150
*1100 +
350
900 (called big enough to go by an observing Skipper with 20yrs experience)
950 ( at least 100lb`s bigger )
250
250
150
150
800
1100 +
900
*This fish was caught by Mrs Nella Gomez of Nicaragua on a day trip out of Lizard Island.It was Nella`s first time fishing the GBR and first time using Heavy Tackle.20 minutes after hookup we have a monster at the back of the boat.This fish was the biggest I have ever seen. It was long, wide,deep and carried it`s weight well back. it could have been as much as 1300 or 1400 but you don`t call it that unless you weigh it. With smaller fish we can generally estimate a weight to within 10/20% (50 to 80lbs) but when they get big other factors come into account, ie are they spent or not; an inch of girth carried the length is 100lbs etc. Nevertheless an absolutely awesome fish.

So all in all an incredible season. Overall slightly better than half a fish a day, and a strike to tag ratio of 52% which is not as good as we experienced last year,but which comes about as a consequence of little fish trying to eat big baits(Scaly Mackeral weighing from 6 to 14lb)

There are always a few other things worth mention so here goes

* We had two huge fish come up behind a big Scaly skip bait; they lit up blue then black, we wondered which one would eat. Then a 350lb fish ( obviously a male ) free - jumped 20yds to the side of them and they both went brown and disappeared. Seems sex is more important than food on occassion.

* This wasn`t a season for rafting because of the ordinary weather but we still had some party time when we and our Charterers were invited over to the Motherships "Phoenix" as guests of Mike Levitt and Don Tyson and to "Atlantic Princess' as guests of Bill Boyle. The rest of the parties were at the wharf in Cooktown. It was all good fun.

* I created great amusement among the 12 boats tied up at Cooktown when after a trip back home i printed and distributed a copy of one Skippers web posting. He had tagged 3 over a grand for the week and seen 6 in a row. Heaven forbid. Then he weighed one which went 742. Thats worse than last years Lizard where he tagged a 900 then a 950 and weighed one which went 802. This bloke has a total of 2 yrs experience on the GBR gut his website claims 12. You can`t beleive what you read and expience counts.

* it`s still hard for me to believve that we got 3 certain and 2 possible granders in one season. There are seasons where few people see one which is a chance

I wish you and your families an enjoyable Christmas and a happy and successful 2007.