There are a couple of billfish photos on another thread (Freshwater Fishing Old Photos) which should be here. My mistake. I'll have to get the Mod to slip them in here.

This is what started it all. Yope de Jong's marlin taken just to the north of Umbakumba (Groote Eylandt) I was stationed at Alyangula at the time, and had just got the Groote Game and Sport Fishing Club going. It was a timely event.


This is a sail taken by Richard Crookes who was a member of DGFC at the time. NTGFA and DGFC were pretty well wrapped together in those days. George Redmond was the President. Photo taken at the Trailer Boat Club where we had most of our meetings.



This is the first qualifying sailfish taken as part of the NT Govts incentive scheme and won the first $1000 "bounty" Taken in the Trench. I forget the anglers name, but I think that he was a pilot or mixed up in the aviation industry.


Peter McIntyres $1000 sail taken in the Trench


Graham Parsells Sail taken on John Saltmarsh's Shirallee S, which was used for the billfish survey.


Corry Cats' "Game Fisher" which he bought from Cairns. The marlin he is holding was his first of two he caught during the Gove Game Classic

hey mate,

this is an old post my old man rossco did awhile back.. thought it may interest you. he was living in gove in the 70's and 80's. few scans/pics attached. ill have to look through the albums at home im sure theres more kicking around..

cheers...

Hi, the catch data on the Thai pair trawlers throughout the 70's to mid 80's should be available through the CSIRO or through archives. I had a mate working as an observer on the Thai boats out from Gove in the early 80's and the photo's of the billfish kills he took was scary. In those days we used to see and get sails and marlin in the Truant island area on a fairly regular basis. As I understand the billfish have now moved back in closer to Gove itself! The return of the mackies in big numbers in the late 80's was a sign that the reduction in net size saw the Thai's moving out of the area and stocks coming back. When we were camped on the islands you could see the Thai and Indo boats coming in over the horizen for a night poach. You could hear them on their 27mg radios chatting away. Nhulunbuy Regional Fishing Club, Darwin Game etc should have data going back to about 1984 on billfish captures in the NT from the NT Game fishing Competitions. The NT Govt had a bounty out on sails and marlin about this time as well. The bounty was for 5 recorded captures of each species. $1k for sails and $2k for marlin. From memory most were caught in the Darwin area. I have attached a scan of one of the original NT Gamefishing Record certificates. This was the 1st billfish ever captured in a sanctioned game fishing comp in the NT. I was lucky enough at the time to be the 1st person to have their name on the old 'Chief Ministers' Game Fishing plaque. We had no GPS in those days and all searching was done with compass, paper sounder and the local chart on the ice box. An auto pilot was an ocky strap on the steering wheel for us. More luck than anything else finding fish. We were camping 35 mile offshore in 4.5 to 5.5 metre tinnies. It was fun and I guess a bit of pioneering at the time. We used mainly 4x4 gars and mullet as swim baits, chin rigged with plastic skirts. A well rigged small skinny or tarpon worked as well. Tuna was the best for raising marlin and we found that most marlin we saw were working below the tuna schools. I guess they follow them about for an easy feed. We rigged daisy chains with about 6 droppers with gar or mullet on them. We usually had 2 of these out the back not that far back from the prop wash. We sometimes put a bigger teaser down the middle out as well. If we didn't have a teaser (sometimes blitzed by a fish) we found the good old 4XXXX yellow can to work well with holes punched in the bottom to create a bubble trail. We worked the the contour lines around shoals and always where we could see some form of bait schools on the paper sounder. Some days we would run out of paper and have to reverse it. Luv the old stylus sounders. NOT! If only we had the gear available we have now, then. Cheers

Here is a twist for ya spook.. Yope was my uncles brother... He died about 8-10 years ago from asbestosis .. Uncle John is still around and was also into early game fishing.. He (and two of my cousins) is one of the best taxidermists in Australia.

I will copy the picture and sent it home for the family to see.. They will be stoked to say the least...

Good poop spook.

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Thats my signature on the certificate as Secretary of the Association at the time. Thats Lindsay Youngs as Match Committee. I remember Ross Abraham quite well, although I have not seen him for over 20 years.

I was also the Program Manager for NT Fisheries which monitored to activities of the pair trawlers and gillnetters from Taiwan which are the ones to which you make reference.
The Thais came later and were not involved in gill netting, their activities were not permitted east of Cape Wessell and took very few sailfish or marlin. I monitored the collective catch reports which were provided from the Observer Operations and put them together to form something of a pattern. This was after the Billfish Survey, which came about as a result of me lobbying the then Director of Fiisheries, Dick Slack-Smith and together with our caps in hand we were granted an audience with Paul Everingham (the Chief Minister at the time) and Marshall Perron (the Treasurer) They gave me $10,000 to do the survey and it was a fair amount at the time, these days it might buy three days on a game fishing boat, we made it do for a month. It was from that survey which the Shiralee S was used I compiled the report (Fisheries Report No 9)

In your other photos Neil Berry was a police officer in Gove at the time and I think he is still around somewhere.

In the photo of the marlin on a gantree, the bloke behind on the left was a government stooge on a junket, I forget his name, but he was there because the NT Government put a fair bit of money into it. In front of him is Bobby Moore who worked the deck of the Pacific Adventure with me, Ken Veal who caught that fish, and was our second for the event the first beiong caught by Geoff Winston (or Weston) who was a mechanic at Bathurst Island, and on the right is Clive Perry, the skipper and ownerof Pacific Adventure, a 46 Cresta.

I might be wrong about the cash bounty for the billfish. I seem to recall $5000 being for something, I'll have to cjeck my records. In any event, the size of the bounty in either amount was indicative of the faith that Everingham and Perron had in the potential, which has largely been unexploited to this day, perhaps due to the remoteness of the areas and the attention and greater stocks of billfish in more accessible areas, like Broome as one example. On particular significance however, was the attitude of one notable fishing scribe of the era, who stated that there were no permanent stocks of billfish in Northern territory waters, and he is yet to eat his words, but I suppose that ego's being what they are, would preclude that.

It's especially good that there are these records around of what was going on in those days, it makes for good debate over a few beers after a days fishing.

The bloke name on the left at the rear was Bill Coburn, he was a harmless poor bastard, and had been moving around in various government positions of go nowhere for quite a while. I think he retired into oblivion.

If you want a better copy of the photo of Yope PM me with your emaill address and I'll send one

That looks like Kev Moores signature as President on that certificate. He is now retired and lives in Cairns

Intersting how things diverge and come back together somtimes isnt it.Good stuff.

Or maybe porn by the getout he's wearing!!

Good post Spook I love looking at old fisho photos trying to sus out the gear they use and just thinking about how they felt when the pic was taken.
Look at the camera gear we have now,,,just point and shoot ,then send your pic around the world in a matter of seconds.Got any more pics ?

Thanks
Jeff

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Got a few here, I'm in the middle of scanning through a heap of old slide negs that have some memories.

I'll get onto posting them as soon as I get them together.

Looking forward to seeing them,thanks for sharing your memories

jeff

P.S don,t need to see anymore porn guy

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I have been digging around again and have a couple more
This one is on Pacific Adventure (Clive Perry) during one of the Gove tournaments
Ken veal Myself Bobby Moores and Chris Weston


Ken Veal celebrating his marlin catch


Chris Weston with his marlin the same trip


Myself with a nice sail taken off the Perrons on Pacific Adventure


Col Cordingley with a very nice sail


The government boat that I had while I was stationed at Groote


Taken during the last ohase of the Billfish Survey in May 1983
L to R jack Erskine Laurie Woodbridge myself and Grahan Lax