Second day chasing billfish at Exmouth and we had a ball. 20 minutes into trolling Amanda had a hookup and 5 minutes later her first and our boats second marlin was on the floor of our boat. It didn't "perform" to the same extent as the first but it did a few jumps and certainly wasn't keen on being pulled to the boat. Amanda did extremely well and was rightly pretty pleased as the photos were taken.
Catching Marlin didn't seem too difficult until reality hit and we spent the next 3 hours trolling for no more marlin.
Things did start to look up a bit as Hanno and I had a double hookup on Dolphin Fish. This coincided with a significant increase in flying fish around the boat and more bird activity in the area. As we were all commenting on how it seemed somehow "fishier" the highly successful green lure suddenly started disappearing into the distance. Hanno was on and all indications were it was a big billfish. A couple of minutes later a big marlin took off out of the water. As the big fish came close to the boat it was very obvious it had a lot more fight left in it as it took off again. Hanno did everything right as he finally brought it into the side of the boat where I was able to get a grip of its bill and drag it over the side and onto the floor. Carols outlay of $6 for a pair of gloves had now saved the day on 3 marlin and a sailfish.
Photos and a quick release saw this magnificent fish swim gracefully towards the bottom some 90 metres down.
With all our crew now having landed a billfish our attention turned to Pete's boat who were doing exactly the same as us, had very similar lures and were still to catch a billfish.
With the tide at levels likely to cause problems at Tantabiddy Ramp and still dropping we were forced to head for home. The elation on our boat was a little subdued as we came to the realisation that there is a hell of a lot of luck involved in this type of fishing. Hopefully Pete's luck will change tomorrow.