I’VE been on a marlin mission for the past couple of weeks. Marlin, like all big gamefish, just don’t come easy. You have to put the hard yards in to get them. And the presence of these gamefish is influenced by so many outside factors – tides, moon, weather, bait, water temp … You can plan ahead and do everything you can to put the odds in your favour but essentially you have little control over what goes on. Marlin, like nature itself, are fickle beasts. But when it all comes together, there’s little better in the world of fishing than catching (and releasing) a marlin.
I tend to get a bit obsessive about marlin at this time of year. Where I live on the South Coast, marlin are only really an option over summer and autumn and if you want to get amongst them you need to get out there when they’re on. This season has been interesting. The fish are there big time when the conditions are right, but the strange weather patterns we are currently experiencing along the east coast has made finding a suitable window of opportunity hard to pick.
Things are made all the more difficult due to the usual family and work commitments. I’d unfortunately already missed out on a couple of hot bites this season and resolved not to let that happen again. The first trip out with Wes Murphy, my son Jack and his mate Jake a few weeks back resulted in eight hours of trolling for one bite that pulled the lure out of the ‘rigger, took a bit of drag and then fell off. The water out on the shelf was 25 degrees and the current was pouring south at between 2-4 knots. Conditions were fantastic – no wind, low swell – but bait was non-existent. No bait, no marlin. On the way back in we checked out the famous Banks, east of Greenwell Point, and watched Dad’s Boat, a 40-foot Caribbean skippered by Wes’s brother Craig, catch a nice black. By that stage the afternoon nor-easter had kicked in with a vengeance, making our ride back to the ramp a slow and wet affair.
Over the next few days I studied the weather maps, prepared traces, sharpened hooks and respooled my game rods with new line. Conditions were crap early in the week but Friday looked like it would be ok. Fisho’s Chris Yu, fresh from a ripper session on striped marlin at Port Stephens the week before (see report HERE), was keen to come down to chase some South Coast blacks. Chris drove down from Sydney late on Thursday. The weather reports predicted light winds but when we woke up at 4am the breeze was gusting to what seemed liked 15-20 knots in the trees around my house and squalls were bringing through heavy showers of rain.
We pulled the pin. I went back to bed or an hour or two and poor old Chris drove back to Sydney.
Around lunch time the skies cleared and the wind dropped. I was in my office, listlessly editing stories for next month’s mag. I couldn’t stop looking outside at the leaves drooping in the still air. Bugger it. I called local fisho and keen photographer Ian Osterloh. He was up for a quick arvo session. It looked good at the ramp and even better at the bait grounds. A couple of miles out to sea, however, things became decidedly unpleasant. The wind out here was almost due east and puffing at about 20 knots, creating messy and confused seas. We punched out to the FAD and trolled up a small dollie. We headed back into the Banks and set up a drift adjacent to the NE Hump. We were the only nuts out there. The current was ripping. Combined with the wind and swell, the rampaging current created a series of pressure waves over the reef. It was pretty sporty but we stuck it out, drifting our live slimies down along the 30 fathom line out from the main structure. We were drifting way too fast, unfortunately, and in no time were well off the marks and heading south towards Beecroft.
We were soaked and cold. The damn wind was getting stronger. Our motivation levels were low, almost non-existent. If we had hooked a fish, it would have been hell on wheels fighting the damn thing in these wild conditions. We gave up and headed in as the sun began to set over Cambewarra Mountain. We got absolutely drilled all the way back into the river.
I arrived back home in the dark and stumbled into the house. My wife Mel just looked at me. “Why do you bother?” she asked. I didn’t answer. There was nothing I could say.
Saturday was a family day – I took my six-year-old daughter Suzie to the Nowra show in the morning and did a few jobs around the house in the arvo. However, I kept up a surreptitious review of the weather reports – Sunday was looking pretty bloody good!
A few phone calls and it was sorted. I wasn’t very popular at home when I announced I was going fishing again …
Next morning we were on the water early and had a swag of fat slimies in the tank well before dawn. Seas were relatively calm; a light sou-westerly gently ruffled the water. We had the first circle hook rigged bait in the water just as the sun rose and it got eaten within three minutes. The fish made several spectacular leaps into the sun, each time sending a golden spray of water droplets into the air, before slugging away down deep. Wes was on the wheel, expertly positioning the boat so I could exert maximum pressure on the marlin while Ian snapped away with his Canon 1D. Regular fishing mate Mark Luscombe took the wheel as the fish neared the boat so Wesbo could take the trace. We successfully released the fish just on 7am. It was a black marlin, about 80 kilos. High fives all around!
Other boats had hooked, fought and released similar sized fish while we were dealing with ours. It was a hot little pre-dawn bite that coincided exactly with the tide change. We saw other fish caught intermittently throughout the morning but aside from a procession of large bronze whalers which either bit us off or ran us through the wringers, we had no further hook-ups. Dad’s Boat caught a couple, unfortunately losing one to a snapped hook, and Andy Clark, fishing from his 5m centre console tinny, scored a big striped marlin and a nice black while sitting on some bait schools well away from the main reef. I counted 38 boats all jostling for position around the NE Hump area of the Banks. There was the usual banter on the radio, and things got a bit heated for a few minutes when a boat slow trolling livies tangled up and cut off a marlin that was hooked by some other guys fishing nearby. Some fellas from one of the fishing TV shows were out there as well. They hooked a fish and then climbed into a small rubber ducky they had tied behind their boat. They then filmed for hours while fighting the marlin from the inflatable boat. There was some radio debate amongst the fleet as to the purpose behind this … I guess you can watch the show and make up your own minds. Why get out of a perfectly good boat to muck around with a marlin in a rubber ducky? I must admit to being a tad perplexed as to why you would do this … but they got the fish so good on them.
We pulled the pin at 1pm and cruised back at 20 knots over calm seas. A fantastic day. The boat was washed and back in the shed by 3pm. Job done. Marlin No.1 for the 2012 season. Wonder if the weather will be any good next weekend?
All images by Ian Osterloh
