Thanks to our good mate Darrell Mann for this amazing report including an encounter with a true giant blue marlin! They also learned first-hand just how tough and durable our lure heads are with a mako leaving a tooth behind in an XL TUBE!
“Hi mate, just a quick wrap up of my recent trip to the Montebello Islands in Western Australia.
I was lucky enough to catch up with Graham and Carmen McCloy from Game and Leisure Boats at the Gold Coast who had chartered the 40ft Black Watch called Reely Black and invited me for their first days fishing wide of the Montes some 35 miles to the grounds, as I was on Blue Lightning their sailfish boat.
After a first successful day on the wide grounds I ended up tagging along for the week which was amazing, the grounds wide of the Montes are the same contours that run past Exmouth and the quality of the fishery is unbelievable and very much untapped due to being some 110 miles off the mainland.
Graham and Carmen were primarily chasing that MONSTER BLUE and on day 3 the Montes produced, with the sun almost down BIG BERTHA (named by Carmen) came outside in on the right rigger with half its body out of the water it was the most amazing bite I have ever seen and the XL TUBE in purple over black had been inhaled and with the entire crew on call in the cockpit ready to call it a day and pull the lures in the cheers were LOUD to say the least! After almost being spooled (800m plus) on the first run all the other tackle was cleared and the long process of retrieving the backing began, Skipper Chad Mills charged back and with Graham’s chair experience we were making good ground but unfortunately Graham with half the line retrieved he felt the hook leave the BIG GIRL, with all the crew with heads down and line still coming in the 130 pound outfit loaded up again and we were back on!!! Hoping that it was the same fish fingers crossed we were amazed to see a MONSTER MAKO of some 300 kg take to the air. After some 20mins we retrieved the XL Tube with a small stick gaff and were able to depart from the very aggressive Mako. What a great way to end the day … the Mako actually left some of its hardware in the lure head.
The 5 day results are as follows:
- 6 Blues to 400lb Tagged, 3 blues traced but not tagged, estimated another 10 raised, one over the mark!
- 2 Blacks to 800lb tagged, 2 more BIG Blacks raised one over the mark!
- 1 Striped 150lb Tagged, had a pack attack of some 10 to 15 Striped Marlin crawling all over the lures but only got one due the heavy hooks and lures.
Hot lures for us were the XL TUBE, XL KABOOM and Large PLUNGER!”
Thanks again to Darrell for this great report! What an adventure!
Leave A Comment