Special on the Big Marlin

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The Holy Grail – Townsville 29/9/07

In preparation for a day’s fishing, on the Friday night we were having a few beers on Marks Hislop's new boat “Rose Red” (formally my old “Utopia” of nine years). “Rose Red” is a ‘98 model Riviera 39’ running all Furuno electronics including a CH250 sonar.

This was going to be my first trip of the season out wide and the first ever for Mark and his mates, we'd just finished setting the drags on my 50lb stand up outfits when a good friend & clubmate, Mick Meiers called up on the radio and asked “Can you bring me out a tag pole in the morning, I've broken the tip off mine?” Mick had headed out to Myrmidon around lunch time that day and dropped the lines in the water around 2.30pm. When asked, “How's the fishing?” Mick's reply was just what the doctor ordered and sent us into a spin. He'd hooked and tagged a 500 pounder and then almost immediately hooked up a huge 800 plus pounder, which decimating his 50lb gear. Mick’s next advice was fairly straight forward. He said “Tom, put in the chair and get out the big gear!”. With a huge “Yahoo”, I was into the car and off to my shed in a flash. The crew, Mark and his two mates, Elio and Jerry couldn't believe their eyes when I turned up with my Reelax Chair and the 130lb outfits. I can remember the first time I laid my eyes on this huge gear and what I said was “holy Shit”, we also had a lot of “Holy Shits” going on that night. Mark and Elio had only done a couple of light tackle trips and this was all totally new to Jerry, so consequently a crash course in heavy tackle was coming up.

Saturday was also my wife Kaye's 45th birthday and as all good fishermen do when missing the wife’s birthday and as I do on every trip out wide, I promised to catch her the elusive thousand pounder. She couldn't be convinced to come and at 3.45am I got the pre-arranged 5am call from some very excited anglers saying the engines are warm and we're ready to go! I grabbed the flying gaffs leaning up in the corner of the sand room of my unit on the way out to meet my ride. I've always thought “Be Prepared! the one time you don't take the flying gaffs out wide will be the time you hook the big Julie” (the 60+ year old world record beater)” so wasn’t taking any risks this time either.

Mark drove the boat while I continued my interrupted sleep on the couch. Half an hour short of Myrmidon, I woke up & we started getting ready. We popped out the outriggers, carried out the rods, clipped on the lures and started the next part of the crash course instructional talk. Fortunately, “Rose Red” has the one piece of equipment always handy for this kind of short handed fishing, cockpit controls, and these proved extremely useful later that day.

All set up and ready to go we rolled into the lagoon at Myrmidon Reef around 7.00am to drop off Mick’s Tag pole. Looking back that broken tip was our inspiration as we got the news from Mick and then packed the heavy artillery. We exchanged quick morning pleasantries and apologised for being unable to stop and chat but we were on a mission – we were going fishing. Due to other commitments we'd travelled 70 Nm for one day’s fishing and we didn’t want to waste a minute of it.

The weather was perfect with a slight roll on the ocean and just enough breeze to be NQ tropics comfortable. I have this big arse pusher lure called Big Boffa made by Pacific Lures with a big flashy paua shell centre that I usually run on the short flat line. This time I decided to run it right back off the rigger hoping that another of those 800 plus fish might find it irresistible. It worked a treat and within an hour or so we had a hit, everyone was dozing and I was looking at the screens so we didn't see it. It didn't hook up so we kept on going and did a number of laps around Pithdon Bank, a club-named spot between Myrmidon and Pith Reefs where there has been some recent fish sightings. Mick's welcoming party the day before confirmed this. By 11am the crew were getting restless, so I made the suggestion that we organise something to eat. That always works, when you are in the middle of organising a feed, you get a hit. Elio had fished the Port Hinchinbrook tournament two weeks before with us and he's one of those guys you love to have on the boat as he always brings a load of tasty food. Mick had been working down round Myrmidon with no luck and was on his way back to where we were. Whilst munching on some snacks we headed in the opposite direction back towards Myrmidon running over the top of some of old marks from years gone by. Passing each other close by we waved and within no time “bang” the left rigger went off and this huge fish was greyhounding across the water. All the practice we'd had paid off at this point as very professionally Mark had his rod in the chair, clipped on the straps and pushed up the drag to the button in a flash. Looking down from the bridge I could see the spool of 130 was already half gone and vanishing very quickly. I yelled “Get those fucking lines in, we're going to get spooled!” and that got the others into gear and lines were cleared and the teaser brought in. I threw her into reverse and Mark started madly winding. I grabbed the radio and yelled to Mick “Get a load of the size of this one!” as the fish was closer to his boat than ours at that stage. The hard work began as she went down 115 metres to the bottom.

I relocated myself downstairs to the cockpit controls and Jerry grabbed my wiring gloves ready for the next stage of my multi-tasking day. Mark kept winding and after making a couple of fine adjustments to the chair, I gave Elio and Jerry their final session on how to work the cockpit controls on my commands and using the line cutter if we get into trouble while I wired the fish. Nothing like last minute hands-on training.

Mark fought the fish like a hardened professional but after an hour and a half he was starting to tire and the fish was showing no signs of slowing down as it still motored along the bottom with no intention of surfacing. So we put on more drag, up past the button and then finally to “sunset”. We tried every trick in the book but she wouldn't play. After 2 ¾ hours Mark was exhausted and the crew were continually providing encouragement and provisions like cold showers, chocolate, coke and prawns (see what I mean about Elio). None of this was helping his dwindling energy levels though and by now he was at the two handed winding stage. Finally the fish surfaced and we crept back. Mark now drew on some newfound strength that the adrenalin of the moment provides and up came the leader. I grabbed the leader and started to pull her in. The fish was trying to turn and like the angler giving its all and its last bit of effort. We'd measured the tag pole to estimate the fish’s length - 10 foot tag pole + 2 inches = 1000lb. We had tag pole + 1 foot and then some but by now unfortunately the fish was buggered.

Looking at the sharks milling around in the depths below and the unlikely chance of reviving the fish for a safe release, plus the fact that this fish was definitely going to go the record numbers for Townsville, we decided to get her on board. This was a good idea in theory but wasn't going to happen with four guys and the small transom door on the Riv. Fortunately Mick and his boat “Princess C” were close at hand so Mick jumped on and still it wouldn't come. We called on another local boat, “Tunnel Vision” owned by Hayden Tilley, brother of Calvin Tilley who incidently skippered the boat in the mid 80's that weighed the last attempt at a 1000lb fish. That fish after some 40 hours on the deck officially just fell short of the magic number. The angler that day was well known local boat builder, Peter O’Brien. Hayden unloaded another four or five guys onto our boat and finally we got her to squeeze through the door.

After lots of back slapping, cheering and a big thanks to all the helpers and we were off to town. Our next drama was finding some scales. The TGFC owns the only set of certified big scales in town but we couldn't raise the weighmaster Anthony Florence (son of the late fishing movie maker Mal Florence). The radio and mobile phones were running hot but Anthony was nowhere to be found. Being ARL Grand Final Day and him being an ARL fan, it was suggested he was out partying but he was in fact fishing in Vanuatu. To cut a very long story short, the wrong scales were delivered to Magnetic Island from the mainland, followed by searching all over for 23 hours until we finally found the scales. We weighed the fish at 504.5kg or 1109.9lb. A great fish for Mark’s first catch, his new boat and Townsville in general.

Being the very newsworthy event it was, we found ourselves in print on the front page of the Townville Bulletin the next day and in the middle of the consequent shit fight that is still going on today. Via the radio, internet and newspaper, opinions were raging. Dr Julian Pepperall, Peter Pakula and a multitude of locals were very supportive in contrast to the extreme green movement who labelled us every name possible! At the end of the day we'll never get both sides to agree but I have attached a copy of my official letter to the editor to voice my own opinion, that was printed in the paper after a week of the public debating 

Tom Hatrick

President

Townsville Game Fishing Club Inc 

Pics

 

Letter to Editor in Response to Comments in Press

Wednesday, 10 October 2007 Townsville Bulletin, “Letters to the Editor” Section. Dear Editor, Thank you for your story and the subsequent interest the 1100lb Black Marlin caught off Townsville has attracted.  With regards to the negative press, we understand your point of view as we also agree with many of the points raised. We definitely would have preferred to have measured and released the fish as I have done with hundreds of other fish over the past nine years and in keeping with the ethics of gamefishing. Our sport is strictly tag & release using research tags and 99.9% of the time the fish is tagged and released.  However, all said and done the fish died alongside the boat and I would be lying if I didn't admit to being proud to be part of this slice of Australian fishing history. Weighing the fish also raised public awareness that these magnificent fish are out there off the Townsville coast.   The results from decades of research has enabled us to better understand the migratory habits etc of this species and has also highlighted the major risk to Marlin survival is at the hands of longline fishermen worldwide every year causing the death of in excess of 10,000 Marlin. In our great state of Queensland the commercial taking of any Marlin species is illegal, however, across the border in NSW it is legal to take striped marlin.  Each year, a large number of blue and black marlin is also caught by longliners because the same bait & rigs are used as for the striped marlin. Up to 500 Marlin are tagged off Townsville each year, and the tag data combined with other local NQ tagging data has provided information for the Cairns longlining fleet so they can try and avoid our Marlin. The black marlin industry of Cairns generates millions of dollars in revenue for the city each year by game fishermen visiting from all over the world to try their hand at the sport.  This all came about because 41 years ago the first thousand pound Marlin was caught off Cairns and this fish was brought back and weighed. This single fish started an industry that kicked off an important aspect of the Cairns and North Queensland tourism market as we know it today (as quoted by the mayor of Cairns last year).   The interest and positive feedback we have already received throughout Australia and worldwide has been amazing and can only be a positive note for Townsville and our tourism market. Who knows this one fish may help to attract more tourism and revenue to Townsville and that can only be a positive note! Tom Hatrick   President- Townsville Game Fishing Club Unit 4101, Bright Point 146 Sooning Street, Nelly Bay 4819 Phone: 47712677 or 0427 581194