KEKOA’s owner Scotty Taylor has joined us for his annual marlin fishing trip on board KEKOA with son-in-law Brendan (also KEKOA‘s shore manager). With one day’s fishing to got we are up to 8 black marlin for the trip so far (to 950+lbs) and have also passed the magic 50 marlin milestone for our 2011 season on the reef already (currently at 54).
It’s this time of year, when fishing at Linden Bank (aka Linden Stadium) that we start to look further afield, both to find the marlin, but also to find some marlin away from the crowds. On Sunday, we moved away from the fleet heading south and hooked up on a nice big giant black marlin for Scotty. Scotty has been fishing with Capt. Luke for many years, and has fought many big fish, and so he put his experience to good use in the chair. She was released in good condition after a short but exciting fight (with some good aerials and a drenching x 2 from her tail beside the boat — such a long fish, she got my camera twice when I wasn’t expecting it!) At 950lbs, this one was Scotty’s biggest yet.
After watching the currents for the past few weeks, Capt. Luke has been itching to head down to Myrmidon Reef off Townsville for a look. Scotty has had some good fishing with Luke at Myrmidon in the past (four marlin in one afternoon on the way through) so he was happy to give it a look. We spent most of Monday traveling, and put the lures in and almost as soon as we got close to the reef in the afternoon, we had a double header of blue marlin up! Unfortunately they were more interested in looking than eating which was to characterize our fishing at Myrmidon. Overall we raised 5 marlin (three blues and two blacks) but all were window shopping. It wasn’t until we decided to leave and head north-west to Flora Reef that we got one to stick—at 5:30 am no less~! The trip to Flora was a good one and we ended up going 3 from 4, all black marlin (and we raised a blue marlin about 400lbs that wouldn’t eat). This morning we were off again nice and early heading back into the edge via the seamount. This time, just before 8am we were on again. Today’s tally is a very respectable 4 from 5. Two of the four for Brendan on standup tackle which has been great fun!
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