NT Billfish Capture Data

If you are into billfish, this is your home.
Nepenthe
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Post by Nepenthe »

Yeah thats not a bad idea Matt and I have tried it once or twice with a mate of mine who is an ex pro mack fisherman, but I generally break down in tears after five minutes of listening to how many tons of macks were caught and when he gets started on the 500+ jewfish sessions I get homicidal tendencies to rival old mate Fred West, with visions of your sailfish slaughter post hereabouts going through my head :banghead:.

On a more positive note I would be most interested to hear about the performance of your new riggers on the water, once you have tested them, as they sound just the ticket. :cheers:

Cheers John


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Post by dodgyone »

When you see what the mack fishing is like at the top of the Tiwis. TONS is still not out of the question today. :|
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Macks

Post by jasonmcc »

Yeah I agree Dodgy. Hope Mack fishing like that can still be reasonably accessable in 10 years time :|

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Post by Nepenthe »

Yeah
Thanks for reminding me I wasnt there fellas. :(
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Post by rossco »

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
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punter
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Post by punter »

Great bit of history there Rossco, thanks for sharing it. I love hearing stories of what things were like around the top end in days gone by. Thanks again. :bow:
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Post by rossco »

Some old photos and news clips that might interest someone out there! I cannot seem to do them as a bulk lot so I'll do them individually.
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Post by rossco »

More old stuff
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Post by rossco »

More old stuff - Kenny Veal's Marlin off Truant island
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Nepenthe
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Post by Nepenthe »

Hey Rossco

Thanks for the info on the Darwin billfish scene in the early days, it sure would have been a hoot chasing them with a compass and paper chart sounders, thats committment for you. By the way do you happen to know where old mate Kenny Veal is these days, he used to come visit chasing beakies in the old Winnellie Marine alloy outrigger canoe when I was living on Croker Is in the late 80's but I lost track of him. There was a man with billfish fever if ever I saw one!!! :applause:

:cheers: John
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Post by rossco »

Hi John, last I heard Ken was working on the Tiwi Islands but I believe he has since moved. He could well be back in Darwin. I remember the ally outrigger well. Long and skinny was the theory, to slip through the south easterly chop. If I hear where he is I'll let you know. Cheers
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