16-19.02.12 Eastland Port Marlin/Tuna hunt

The Eastland Port Marlin/Tuna Hunt.

Johnstone, Gnome and myself asked Rex if he was going in the Marlin hunt again this year, if he was does he want a crew as we crewed for him last year. Rex Briant replied that he was going to compete in the world series Jet Sprint champs that was being held in New Zealand this year, as a former world champion he thought it was a opportunity to good to miss. So Rex said "take my boat and do well". Rex owns White Pointer Boats a Boat building business here in Gisborne, so with great generosity gave me White pointer to take out, White Pointer is a Sportsman 840 pro, the boat we fished off last year with Gnome coming second in the Marlin section with a 117kg Stripe Marlin.
The first day the sea was still sloppy from a southerly that came through the day before and was forecasted to die out late afternoon. We left the dock at 5.30am and headed to the area where they caught the short billed spear fish last year.
We chugged around most of the day with nothing to show, Gnome was up the front asleep and Johnstone and I had just reset the lures, they just didn't look right so we changed them all and reset the pattern, I said to Johnstone they look great and feel fishy, 20 minutes later the 80 wide screamed, we scrambled to pull the other rods in, the reel went silent, I said to Johnstone "have we dropped it". "No" he said "its still there" I got Johnstone (his turn) and the rod into the Game chair just in time for a big run, we looked out and saw a lot of slashing and the sickle shape of it's tail, "fuck it's a marlin" and with that it screamed off and pulled half the 37kg nylon off the reel. By now Gnome had woken and was backing the boat. It took Johnstone 45 minutes to get the marlin along side the boat so I could sink the flying gaff into it, we dropped the door down into the sea and the marlin flopped its bill into the boat allowing us the pull it into the boat in one easy pull. After 10 minutes of back slapping we checked the marlin out and to our surprise it was a Blue or a black. As we had never seen one before we weren't sure.

228.650kg Blue Marlin

We decided to head back to port and weight the Marlin in before it started to lose too much weight as there was a couple of stripe marlin's on the way in also.

Unloading White Pointer of her Precious cargo

at the Gisborne Tatapouri sports Fishing Club.

3 very happy snapper fishermen.

The next 2 days of the competition the sea was flat and calm, fishing was hard , all we managed to boat was 11 skip jack tuna and 3 albacore tuna, nothing worth weighing.

We had the lead and the last day the weather turned southerly again, but with the choppy seas a number of boats hooked up and a couple more stripe marlins were caught, but lucky for us no Blues, the nearest marlin to us was a stripe marlin at 126kg.

Johnstone won the contest and we shared the $10000.00 prize money 4 ways (a share for Rex)

If you are looking for a new boat that catches Marlin go to

http://www.whitepointerboats.co.nz/

For the full results go to the Gisborne Tatapouri Sports Fishing Clubs web site. http://www.gtsfc.co.nz/