Hey guys, I posted up quite a long report on an exmouth fishing trip with Josh from Onstrike that I just got back from (http://fishwrecked.com/forum/awesome-exmouth-trip) but was waiting on some footage / photos of a very unusual capture that happened right at the very end of the trip.

We had trolled for two days straight with 6 fish raised the day before on skirts but we werent able to land any which was fairly devastating. Josh changed tactics and left the heavy gear at home deciding to bring out the lighter spin gear and switched from skirts to some skipbaits with circles in hope of getting us a more solid hookup seeing as many of the black marlin the day before had been on the smaller side and just refused to commit to the strike properly. 

So again we trolled all day with high hopes, unfortunately the action from the day before was just not there. The whole ocean was buzzing with life and at times we where surrounded by bait schools and tuna bust ups the size of football fields. There just had to be some big predators lurking nearby, surely!!

Late afternoon approached and we decided 4:30 would be our cut off time to head in. Sure enough as 4:00pm approached we had a billfish appear in the spread, but it only toyed with the baits before vanishing into the deep. It just wasn't our day! Almost defeated as 4:30 ticked over Josh made the call to give it another 15 mins, just in case...

As we made our way into shallower water heading back to the ramp with our hopes fading it happened... in less than 50m of water right out from tantabiddi ramp the call of "Huge billfish, right rigger!!!!" rang out. We looked up to see a bill yet again playing lazily with the bait... this was it, our last chance! It took the bait and dissapeared, I grabbed the rod and started to reel - all of a sudden the drag started to sing and we where on, finally!! 

Here is Josh's explanation of the fight.

"At 4.45pm yesterday while fishing for juvenile black marlin we had a large fish up on the long rigger. The skipping gar was tracked for more than 30 seconds before the big fish lunged. This blue marlin is estimated to be around the 500lb mark, it took an hour on 15kg (30lb) tackle for us to get to the leader before we released her. We never had more than 100 metres of line out and was subdued on a spin reel, with a 130lb leader. We believe she was still actively feeding on other prey while we were fighting her! She was hooked in 48 metres of water with the water temp at 25.8c. Matt Wilson was the angler and Roger Toma took these amazing pics. Wade Carney grabbed the leader and set her on her way, stay tuned for a snippet of video."

A short clip of the big blue putting on a show:

www.youtube.com/watch

It was such a surreal experience and if our size estimates are even close to accurate it was likely a new state record on 30lb, but I was a lot happier to see it swim off strong to fight another day.

A freakish once in a lifetime fish to find especially in so shallow and something I'll never forget. All thanks have to go to Josh from Onstrike for finding and helping me land this fish. Without his skippering expertise knowing where to position the boat at all times and talking me through how to play it I would of had no chance in landing such a monster on light gear so thanks again mate!!

Hope you guys enjoy the footage!!

(edit: Changed youtube link to new longer video!)