Billfish Classic week brings out the best

Broome Fishing Club was abuzz last Saturday night as anglers and guests enjoyed an evening of great food and live entertainment at the wind up and awards presentation for the 2011 Kingswood Marine Broome Billfish Classic.

It brought to an end a week of fierce competition where teams were forced to fish hard right up to the final minute to secure winning places.

Fishing in this tournament is a huge commitment from all teams, everyone spends the weeks leading up to the event collecting bait, making up rigs and readying their vessels.

During the six days of fishing, life in the outside world just about ceases to exist for competitors as they rise about 4.30am each day, prepare themselves for the day ahead and get their vessels up to the fishing grounds by 7am for lines in.

Lines out at 4pm sees teams race for home to get their tag cards into Billfish HQ and enjoy a hot meal at the club and nightly prize allocations and then it’s off home at around 8pm to do it all again the next day.

It is a physically and mentally exhausting week for everyone involved including the amazing helpers back on land who also gave huge amounts of time.

The Billfish Classic is a tagand- release event where all fish captured are tagged with research tags; a tagged sailfish is worth 500pts while marlin and spearfish are worth 1000pts. Anglers then have to fill out detailed tag cards that are then sent to a central data base in NSW. The information compiled from these cards helps gain greater knowledge of these species and will help to conserve and protect them.

This year was an awesome tournament week as the weather gods graced us with glorious weather and the fish were abundant and hungry for a feed.

There were 564 sailfish raised, 454 sailfish strikes, 336 hook ups and 224 sailfish tagged over the six days of competition with 71 raised marlin, 54 of these struck a bait, 36 hooked up and 13 marlin were tagged.

If you are not into bluewater fishing I can tell you that the barra are still hungry up on the Fitzroy River and that big cherabin are being caught by the bucket load up Camballin way, but more on what’s being caught around the traps next week.