This is my first successful Billfish report for the year and I have to say it is a little late and belated but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Headed out on Monday around 900 after a late start with a random deckie by the name of John with me and conditions were as good as I could ask for. Rigged some baits on the way out and put the gear in just south of the Pipeline reef on the Fenton’s. Things were looking grim for the first couple of hours with only one unconfirmed sighting at the top of the Fenton’s. No bait across the whole area and pretty ordinary looking water. Things were looking up around Midday at the approach to the start of North Gutter with a couple of schools of small flying fish popping up out of the water
and a nice current line forming with some nice clear water running along it. Sure enough shortly after crossing into the clear water a nice Sail came up and started bashing the right-hand skip bait. 
A text book 5 count drop back, lever up, and he was on. I passed the rod over to the Deckie to fight his first and got to work clearing the teasers. I have come to the conclusion that I need to purchase some auto retrieve units for my teasers as whilst I love billfishing I am so over clearing teasers short handed! 
The fish gave an excellent account of its’ self after jumping a half a dozen times, powering of on a couple of cracking runs and really playing up at the boat. I realised I had forgotten the gloves at that point and after a bit of fluffing about the fish was brought in for a quick snap and swum for an eventually healthy release. I swum the fish for about 5 minutes before he was biting my hand and good to go, that’s by far the longest time I’ve had to swim a fish so far. I think it was just buggered because it had played up so much on the leader in the final stages after an already impressive fight.
Half an hour later and further up the gutter the chop was up a bit and glare was making it hard to see the two skip baits we had out, so when the left rigger released I didn't see anything behind the bait and assumed it was a false release and reset the clip onlty to have it release again. 
Ok, so I increased the release tension a little bit and reset the bait again only to have it release again, this time looking out the back to see a Sail fading away with what I would imagine was a look of utter disgust on its' face.... 
Oh well, I guess I'm a bit rusty and it might be worth dropping back for a five count on phantom releases too.... As we reached approached the top of North Gutter I had high hopes as there were Frigate Birds working bait which I have always found to be a good indication of apex predators. Sure enough they were there, but it was a big pack of Whaler Sharks between 1-3m herding large anchovies. An amazing spectacle but not what I wanted to see, in case you haven't realised it yet Billies seem to make a habit of avoiding sharks if they can. For all you vermin hunters out there there are plenty of Macks in the area too. (Although I do have a confession to make, I have been chasing inshore Macks on ultralight gear lately when the wind has been up 
) And that was that, nothing much happened after the bottom of the tide and I pulled the pin after reaching the Fentons' on the way back. So a fairly satisfactory result fishing wise for the first shakedown run of the season and I'm pretty happy with the boat mods so I guess we will see what the next set of neaps brings.Cheers,
John.
