|
NEXT MONTHLY COMP
|
Dates
|
16th and 17th
August |
|
August Prizes Coming Soon
|
UP & COMING
TOURNAMENTS
Billfish Bonanza

Billfish Challenge


















 |
  

Click Here for 2008/2009 Membership Form
|
Current News: |
|
|
TGFC Members find Success in Cairns
While local members enjoyed there
Presentation Night on Friday and then a superb
weekend of Bill fishing action down at Bowling
Green, well known Life Member, Mick Meier's traveled
up to the Cairns Bluewater Light Tackle Tournament
and fished aboard Sue & Ted Crocker's new Cairns
Custom Craft, Seduca.
There team
consisted of Cairns based TGFC Members, Sue & Ted,
Mick and Roger Kuhnel. With Cairns
experiencing similar fishing action to Townsville,
it turned out to be a very successful weekend with
over 20 Billfish tagged for the 2 day Tournament.
Local Boat, Wild Turkey went on to take out Champion
Boat Honors, with 5 Tags, mean while Sue was able to
christen Seduca with it's first ever Billfish which
ensured she went on to take out Champion Female,
with 2 Black Marlin and a tuna.
Mick reported that
he carefully transported some Bowling Green Yakka's
up to Cairns which turned out to be a huge hit
amongst the Cairns Billfish, as all marlin hooked on
Seaduca were caught on the CBG yakka's.
Mick joked "Once we ran out of the yakka's, we
didn't see another marlin"
Congratulations to
Team Seduca for a very successful weekend and a very
special thank you to Mick Meier's and super baby
sitter Cathy Bambling for making the effort to
travel the 4hrs North
|
|
|
|
TGFC 2008 Presentation Night
On Friday the 1st of August over 80
Club Members gathered at the Townsville Motor Boat &
Yacht Club to celebrate the past 2007/2008 Season.
Once again everyone was
entertained by the fantastic 'Year in Review' DVD
and although it didn't have much Bill fishing action
due to the disappointing Billfish Season
experienced, the DVD clearly showed that it was the
Annual Social events that made up for it!!
Once all the official proceedings
finished, everyone enjoyed a fantastic night which
continued into the early hours of Saturday Morning.
A special thanks goes to Russell
O'Brien for once again organising a great night , to
Karen Foley for organising some of her amazing
framed art work for prizes & to everyone who
attended as it truly was a night to remember
To get your copy of this years
TGFC Year in Review, please contact Talina O'Brien
at
tobrien@rlsde.com.au and you can purchase your
copy for $ 10.00. Talina will also have copies
available at the September Meeting
Please
Click here to
check out all the 2007/2008 Winners |


|
|
|
|
Bowling
Green ON FIRE!!!
With some good weather last weekend a
contingent of Club boats hit the waters of Bowling Green Bay hoping to
get amongst some 2008 Billfish action & boy was there some action.
With bait schools the size of football fields, gannets all over the
place like they were 10 years ago, there were packs of 5-6 Billfish at a
time terrorizing baits with multiple hook-ups not uncommon. Every boat
experienced action sometime throughout the weekend but it was the stand
outs such as Rose Red who had a massive 19 hits on one morning, Leigh
O’Brien on his new boat OB26 who tagged 4 fish & Mark & Jan Parkes
aboard there new Boat, Mojo with 3 tags. All fish have grown slightly
compared to the early season captures with most fish up around the
15kg-20kg. |

The crew aboard OB26 show off one
of four little Black Marlin tagged last weekend |
|
|
Townsville Game Fishing Club supports Coastguard
The TGFC proudly donated $ 1,000.00 to
the Ingham Coast Guard recently to help repair Ingham's
channel 81 repeater tower, which has has fallen over on
Orpheus Island
The
tower is an integral part of marine safety in North
Queensland waters and is going to cost a total of
$4,000.00 to repair. The Club's started the ball
rolling with club representative Todd O'Shaughnessy
presenting the Cheque recently in hope to spark
generosity and assistance from other local fishing Clubs
Club Life member Mick
Meires stated:-
"I would like to urge
any other generous interested parties to assist the
Ingham Coast Guard with this worthy cause. It's in all
boaties best interests," Meiers said "It's about marine
safety and it's a long way from a taxi rank out there
when you break down."
|
|

Todd O'Shaughnessy
(Centre) presents the Cheque of $
1,000.00 recently |
|
|
|
|
|
2008
Predators Tournament Success
The
Townsville Game Fishing Clubs Annual Predators Tournament was once again
a huge success and even with a 15/20 knot offshore wind forecasted it
still didn’t deter an estimated 400 Townsville anglers to participate in
what is becoming one of North Queensland’s major fishing events.
On Monday afternoon,
the Townsville Game Fishing Club together with the Oonoonba Hotel
welcomed hundreds of anglers, sponsors, & spectators to witness some
outstanding captures which were made during the long weekend. Although
each of the 16 prize categories were won with some awesome fish, it was
the 24.6kg Spanish Mackerel, a 14.1kg Barramundi and a monster (have to
be seen to be believed) 2.175kg Mud Crab which received the loudest
cheers from the excited crowed.
This year the Club
focused on encouraging families and especially the junior anglers to
participate, with the first 100 juniors to
sign up receiving a complimentary Tackle box which
included over 300 pieces of tackle, and come weigh in time, it certainly
proved that they put there new gear to good use, with some fantastic
captures made.
More exciting news
to arise from the weekend was that 2 early season Black Marlin were
tagged & released by Townsville Game Fishing Club Members. Both were
hooked on Halco Laser Pro Mackerel lures and both fish were smaller then
average and were estimated between the 10-12kg mark.
On behalf of the
Townsville Game Fishing Club tournament organizing committee we would
like to thank all the Sponsors, volunteers, the Oonoonba Hotel Staff and
all the anglers involved for once again making the 2008 Predators
Tournament a huge success.
Please
Click here to view all the Weekends
Prize Winners |

"Its all about the juniors"
Reece & Jordan O'Brien prove that Game Fishing runs in
the family with Reece claiming the junior award for the heaviest
Mackerel with this 6.44kg beauty

"Bring on the 2008 Billfish"
Wade
Hislop with one of the first Marlin Tagged & Released for 2008 and
by the smile on Wade's face, you can tell he's looking forward to the up
& coming Billfish Season |
|
|
2008 AIBT Results
Well
the 2008 Australian International Billfish Tournament is over with for
another year and even though the beautiful Sunshine Coast provided us
with Perfect Weather Conditions unfortunately the fishing on the weekend
was extremely slow. A total of 29 Boats participated in the event with
Teams coming from Dampier in the west, Cairns in the North & Port
Stephens in the South. The tournament gave teams the option either to
fish Light Tackle or Heavy Tackle and Team TGFC who were aboard well
known Townsville Boat Reel Chase decided to fish Light Tackle. With
5-10knots conditions on Saturday morning, we were quick to arrive on the
grounds (which mine you are only 19 miles offshore) to find huge schools
of yakka's and dolphins and with start fishing called as you would
imagine our expectations were high. Leigh O'Brien caught a 9.6kg Wahoo
on 8kg which put Townsville on the scorers board and it wasn't long
after that we raised a couple of little Black Marlin which weren't
interested in taking the beautiful Live Yakka that we presented them. On
day one, there was only 3 Blue Marlin tagged & 1 Sailfish.
Day two & the weather had increased to 15 knots and with a Strong Wind
Warning forecasted for later in the day, most boats fished the inshore
grounds. Once again the fishing was very slow with not even a handful of
Billfish tagged
The Champion Boat went to Diversion from Port Stephens who successfully
tagged & released 2 Blue Marlin.
Even
though the fishing was slow, great times were had by everyone & on
behalf of the TGFC team we would like to thank Jim, Kelly & Brenton
aboard Reel Chase for a fantastic weekend!!
Above Image Courtesy of Kelly Dalling
of www.blackmarlinfishingblog.com
|
|
|
|
TGFC Thanks the Sponsors
Sponsors,
business owners and members of TGFC gathered at the Townsville Motor
Boat Club on Thursday evening to reflect on the wonderful work and
valuable contributions these people and companies have made to the
club. It was a way of saying
“thank you” to these people, and in return, the club has become a place
where business and pleasure could be combined.
Guest speaker and major sponsor, Greg Gilbert, explained
how the club was a place where he could bring valued suppliers and
customers
and mix business and pleasure. As a result, he has bought on board many
new and valuable sponsors to the club. Whether it was to invite them to
fish a weekend competition or our major tournament in September,
suppliers and customers enjoyed the opportunity to see how the club was
run. Many have made valuable contributions towards our tournaments and
fishing competitions after experiencing the TGFC hospitality.
Potential sponsors have
also commented on the professional manner
in which the club is run and the
continued high standard of presentation of competitions,
presentation nights and club
videos.
The
TGFC committee would again like to thank our sponsors for
their continued support and to business owners/managers for their
efforts to introduce new sponsors to the club. A great night was
enjoyed by all.
(Story and photos Courtesy of Donna Nicolosi) |
|
|
|
Gilbert's Take on the World
In February 2007, I
asked newly joined Club Members and Sponsors Greg & Jan Gilbert to
complete a Member Profile for our Monthly Newsletter and for those of
you who can remember, one of the questions asked was “What’s your dream
fishing destination?” There answer was “Ribbon’s Reef off Cairns”…Little
did they know at the time, that 15 months later they would make the trip
across the world to represent Australia in one of the World richest and
most prestigious billfish tournaments ever held.
On
May 16th, the Gilberts together with good friends
Ralph Czabayaski and Susan Mahoney
of Adelaide will travel to what’s considered by bluewater anglers as the
Striped Marlin Capital of the World, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in which
they will fish for more then $1,850,000 in prize money in the 2008 World
Championship Billfish Release Tournament.
Click here
for more
|
|
|
|
Currents + Water Temperature = Billfish
Thomas
Bridge, a Marine Biologist specialising in pelagic species was the guest
speaker at our April club meeting.
Over 40 club members
attended the evening to listen and hopefully get a better understanding
on the Billfish migration, water temperature and currents within our
Bowling Green Bay fishery. Even with statistics and research going back
to the early 1970’s, Thomas explained that there are still many unanswered
questions relating to the migration patterns of the Black Marlin but can
advise that the Eastern Australia Currents as well as the Water
temperature do play a very important part.
Over the past 2 decades
scientists have studied the capture statistics of our Billfish and have
compared them to the current patterns and water temperatures within the
Bowling Green Bay area and have come to a conclusion that the Marlin
follow the Eastern Australian Current into the region between the months
of May – October but only if the average water temperature is between 25
degrees – 27 degrees.
With the anticipation
building amongst the club, Thomas was asked “So how is it looking for this
year” he was unable to confirm or deny whether we were going to have a
good season, but did advise a member after the meeting that all was
looking good so far, and with reports of early season bait schools
forming within the region, he is quietly confident that we will
experience a great season…Let’s hope he’s right!!
We would like to thank
Thomas a very interesting night & look forward to working with him more
in the near future
|
|
|
|
Townsville Game Fishing Videos on YouTube
After several
requests from Club Members, family & friends I have now added some of my
video highlights on the website You Tube which now can be accessed at
any time at your own leisure.
For those of you
who don’t know what YouTube is, it’s
an
online service that allows users to upload there videos for free, which
then are able to be viewed by an international audience
Some of the
highlights include Utopia’s 900lb Black Marlin at Bowling Green, Glen
Nutter’s 400lb Black Marlin which earnt him the GFAA Most Meritorious
Award as well as the 2008 Gilbert Group NQ Mining Billfish Challenge
Intro Video
So when the
weather is bad please don’t hesitate to
here
& check it
out…make sure you add it to your favorites so you can visit regularly,
as I will be adding videos on a regular basis
|
|
|
Tag & Release Report
The Townsville
Game Fishing Club is proud to
promote and support Tag & Release to ensure the conservation of our
fantastic fishery. Please find the recent
Game fish Tagging
Report
here
received from our
QGFA and GFAA zone
representative Mick Meiers
 |
|
|
|


Click image or
here for story and
pics. |
|
|
|
NOTE:
A lot of club information on this site is available as PDF
documents. You will need Adobe Reader to view these. This
program is available as a free download from the Adobe
website. Click here or on the logo below.
 |
|
|
|