Whatta loada $hit

[siegfried]

Just read on an unamed site that of 126 black marlin caught/tagged at the Lizard Island comp there was 10 granders, What aload of crap that means 8% of em 1000+(insert dumbfounded icon here) Having fished there and following the fishery for more than just a few years I find it amazing that as the numbers of fish that are wieghed decreases the no of granders increases...just shows the lack of credibility and irresponsibility of the whole fishery. If you wanna target big female fish at breeding time do us all a favour and chase carp , my 2 bob rant for the day

[Midnight]

Gday,
Its always good to have a rant

I only know one skipper up there at the moment and he has called 4 granders for the season, one during the Lizard comp. The bulk of the fish have been between 300 and 900lbs.

If he called it a grander, it was a grander. He has weighed plenty in the past.


How many do you reckon there should be in amongst them up there? I have no idea what the percentage would be??

Cheers,
Myles

[siegfried]

I dont think anyone could answer that mate, certainly not me , but the bottom line 8% over a grand it would be safe to say crap The only thing that will convince me is if they hang em and then theyll be buggered cause they wont be able to bull$*!t the clients that their 750s are granders

[finding_time]

Yep it's a bit of a catch 22, i personally love the idea that granders are being called in the water and not being weighed, it's great for the fishery but it's is humane nature to exagerate just a bit and that does hurt the sports credibility. i guess all you can do is look after your own boat and try and call as accurately as possible and hope other do the same! If anything i reckon we under estimate the fish size on our boat but the day a real monster is along side i'm sure the adrenilin of the situation may take over, but i guess well try and take a short length the best we can and go from there!

Ian

[ffejsmada]

I love the title of your thread.
It's a cracker!

[Midnight]

Yep all true Siegfried and Ian, but as they say, if you really want to know what it weighs you gotta hang it up.

I have never seen a Grander but I really look forward to the day when I do and watch it swim away, probly only to be eaten by 16' Tiger Sharks, but swim away all the same. It would be awesome to see an animal of that size I think.

But at the same time, I have no qualms whatsoever about weighing a fish that will be a record, or even if the angler so desires just for the trophy.

Re the measuring Ian, I have seen a setup where a disc type float around 4" round was attached to a soft tape, like a dress makers tape, and you just had to put the float in the water as you idle forward with the fish along side and the float pulls the tape and you stop it when it reaches the fork and hold your end at the tip of the bottom jaw. The girth you can take a guess at with hand spans I spose or run the tape if able.
I am gonna try to make a similar tape for my boat.

Cheers,
Myles

Oh, and yes kill those bastard Carp! We have a great time harvesting them down on the Murray River on my mates house boat. Still havent caught a cod though

[sleepygreg]

Personally I would rather a 800-900lb marlin be called for a grander - then tagged and released, than a 800 - 900lb fish killed and hung up trying to prove it was a grander. Still a worthwhile capture/tag, and an experienced skipper in those parts KNOWS what a grander is. Its not that hard to measure the length of them when they are beside the boat.....we do it by idling forward until the tail is level with the transom, then marking the gunwhale of the boat in some way level with the lower jaw. Not the most accurate method, but a whole lot better than killing the fish. (by marking i dont mean permanently, it is usually just a marker pen on the gel coat or grab rail, easily removed with a bit of white spirits once the measurement is taken) We perfected this method fishing for sharks down south.

Interesting to note at our club weigh ins, the guys who are charter operators and VERY experienced fishos can usually call the weight of a fish to within about 5kg of its actual weight, whereas the less experienced fishos are rarely even in the ball park, especially with marlin. (before anyone gets up in arms...we dont weigh a lot of marlin, only ones that couldnt be revived usually because they came up tail wrapped...and we prefer to do that out of the public domain, though sometimes thats unavoidable......and no fish has ever been wasted whilst I have been with the club.....at least two occassions when this happened the female anglers who caught the fish were almost inconsolable that the fish couldnt be revived).

Greg

[Smithy]

Gees mate you copped a hiding over on the Marlin Bar for the same post and probably well deserved. That's fishing isn't it. Some years you will crack a concentration of good fish and other years you won't. LI has probably only been averaging 1-2 grander calls a year the last few. This year all the boys obviously stumbled over a nice bucket of fish. There might have even been more fish. One of my mates is in with Sharky who was driving Mauna Kea and they had one that might have gone over but Sharky is a tradionalist and aheres to the "if you don't weight it, don't say it" philosphy so called it at 900#.

The other thing is these are just the breeders that end up on the reef edge. Who isn't to say there isn't a big biomass of fish spawing out on the seamounts and stuff. That seemed to be the case last season. There wasn't much going on, on the edge but once the weather got better in November and the boys headed to the seamount they found a few in the big tuna aggregtions out there.