Good Weather + Bait = Billfish

With the offshore weather forecast predicting winds of 5-10 knots on Saturday, a few Townsville Game Fishing members did not hesitate to take advantage of the very unusually seen oily conditions and made the trip down to Bowling Green Bay in search of some early season Billfish. With boats welcomed by ‘football field’ sized pilchard and yakka’s schools it wasn’t long before that live bait tanks were fall and the lines were in the water. With the temperature gauge showing the water temp of 25.4 degrees and the water colour cleaner then what it has been all year, our
expectations were high and it wasn’t long before Anthony Florence aboard Flo-tation advised us that they had just raised a little 8-10kg Black Marlin but was not able to get a bite out of it. As you would imagine after that report of a sighting the excitement continued to build and it was only 30 mins later that we spotted a little black marlin cart wheeling at the back of Flo-tation and after a short fight Anthony’s fist punched the air a couple of times after successfully putting a tag into it.

Throughout the day we witnessed several free jumping marlins around the boat which all averaged between the 7-8 kg mark. With the fish being so small, we were finding it very difficult to hook them because of there size.

With a quiet period over lunch it was about 2pm before the bait started forming again as the Pilchard schools started glittering across the surface it wasn’t long before we noticed Mick Meiers aboard the 40ft Riviera ‘Rose Red’ reversing back on Roxanne Hislop fish and after a lengthy 2 hour fight, she successfully landed her first ever Billfish which was a 15-20kg Black Marlin. Congratulations Roxy!!

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend… It was great to finally see some good weather and with huge amounts of bait around and another 2 early season billfish tagged & released, its looking real promising for the up & coming season which is due to start in June/July