Well after an epic mission to 1770 with Vertico and an awesome trip bagging out on reds I got the invite to go chase a billfish for the second time in a week with a good mate. First trip I hooked up to two blacks but lost one to it throwing the hooks and the other to line failure.
Headed out this morning bright and early and crossed the lumpy bay to the desired location set out the 6 rods and waited for the action to begin. Was a bit slow but two hours in we had our first hit, I grabbed the rod as the other deckies were asleep on the floor of the boat haha. The fish took off like a solid wahoo but after about a minute a nice black starts jumping all over the ocean! You beauty!!
It took 300-400m of line in the first run and as the boys were mucking round getting two of the lines in that tangled thoughts of being spooled entered my mind and i gave the boys the hurry up so we could chase the fish. So as time went on i was more and more confident of landing the fish, and seeing the size of it when it jumped it was certainly a good one!
Got back most of the line but the fish was deep and very stubborn, tried backing around it a few times without success and then drove off it to get some angle on the line to try plane the fish up and this worked. After 45mins and my arms and back aching the fish was boatside!! Quickly lifted in for some glamour shots and then swum and successfully released! Although it was covered in some form of parasites, so not sure how much longer it would survive....
Pics below tell the story
Very big thanks to the skipper for the invite out and the boat driving to get the fish to the boat aswell!!
Anthony
Beautiful sunrise
and again
lines out
boatside
Trophy shot
Release
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Originally Posted by Midnight
