Update - Stripe Marlin Tracks

28. February 2006

I have been rather slack the last 6 to 8 months with keeping up with the boats activities, or rather; it's just been damn hectic! In short last august; we headed over to Cairns to fish the heavy tackle season on the barrier reef. The boat spent 4 months in Australia and 3 months working out of Lizard Island which is situated 120nm north of Cairns.

We fished a total of 61 days and caught 43 black marlin 15 of which were estimated over 700lbs. We landed one fish that pulled the scales down to 980lbs, and we estimated another 6 fish to be bigger then this one.

The Fishing Show boys were on board for a couple of the biggest fish we caught so look out for the shows coming up this year. There is some awesome footage of big fish boat side! We will also be producing a DVD on Cairns, Ultimate Adventures Vol 2, which I reckon beats the pants off Vol 1!

We got back home on the 10th of December and managed to clean up and grab a quick break over Christmas before sailing to the Wanganellas on the 5th of January. On board with us we had the team from Blue Water Marine Research, headed by John Holdsworth, who coincidently runs the tagging program for recreational anglers. Our mission was to satellite tag four striped marlin on the wanganella banks early in the season to see where the fish are going. We tagged our four fish successfully and also released another 12 fish, which was very slow for the wanganellas, but all the same fairly good fishing!

The tagging program John is running this year also takes in the West coast, North east coast and the Bay of Plenty, with four tags allocated for each area. To date, we have managed to miss major bites in every area!, Turning up a day or two after, alas, we have managed to tag a fish in each area and are currently in the Bay to fish the Tauranga One Base.

The fish are tagged with two types of satellite tags, one is attached into the fishes shoulder, similar to conventional tags and the other is attached to the sickle of the fish. The shoulder tag is called a "pop off" tag, and records information, like depth, water temp, day light, and gets a rough position with the hours of day light. The tag is programmed to pop off after, say two, three, or six months. This position is with in a hundred miles or so. The second method is a little bit if good ole kiwi ingenuity. The idea being that when the fish is "tailing" on the surface, the tag is out of the water therefor can send signals to the satellite that give a very accurate position. The method is still in its infancy and but once all the problems have been ironed out, the tag should remain on the fish for up to a year, and as long as the fish is at large we should get a years worth of migration from our fish. Which, in my opinion is all very interesting!!

Check out the tracks of the marlin to date.

Good Fishing.
Capt Tom