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My report of 35th Shoalhaven Open 28th-30th March 2008.
By Dave Fenech Boat: - "OffTap"
Briefing Thursday night at rear of Greenwell Point bowling club in tournament tent, met all the boys run down on rules and boat pack given to all skippers.
Friday bit choppy but calmned off nicely later, we trolled North of JB Canyons and hooked up to little Stripe around 60kg Caige Fenech Junior member JBGFC was first on and i tagged within 35 minutes on 24kg. Next was Ray Xerri on my boat to hook up on a livie between JB Canyons and Kink to a nice 90kg model his first fish, Tagged in 43 minutes on 24kg, raised another fish later but no luck. Started first day great, but Blue Alabi had it up on us with 5 Tagged Beakies, we had a lot of catching up to do. Great work by the team on Blue Alabi.
Saturday saw a much better run out from Crooky, headed south East again early hook up north of the kink and the junior up again to try and improve the young blokes points, another little stripe on a livie, short fight around 20 minutes Tagged and released to live another day. Drifted some bait schools and jigged some baits to raise a nice size 100 plus stripe, threw in a livie and away she went, i was next up and with Tiagra 50W on Sunset took 50 minutes to subdue before tag deployed and beast released. Nice big fish.
Saturday night dinner at Tournie Tent was relaxing with a great feed, a few prizes raffled off with plenty of stories all round. Ble Alabi was now on 7 fish T&R and we were equal second T&R points Boat with Johnie Casper also doing well on 4 .
Sunday was even a better run out , trolled south along to kink and hooked another little stripe on shotty Joe Xerri's on this time and a few short runs Tag was in in under 20 minutes, first fish T&R before 7.45am last day, looking good, raised a good fish not long after but failed to take our livie, buy this time we were south east of kink 10am and rigger livie gets smashed, good fish this time and Ray was back on for his second ever fish, fought it on almost full drag with time ticking away and 42ks from crooky heads, most stubborn fish for us this season had her just out of tag pole reach twice before she went deep, 50 minutes and she won her freedom with main line broken through. Tally for us 9-6-5.
Caige took out Junior T&R points score and was awarded a TLD25 and 15kg Beastmaster Rod Combo with a nice plaque to hang. We were Runner up T&R Boat with 50,000 points . Lucky door prise went to the most luckiest person of the weekend Me, Great Furuno FCV585 sounder.
Cheers and thanks to the Shoalhaven Game fishing club for a well organised and run event, Bruce from Port Kembla Coast Gaurd who did an outstanding job with the running of Scheds.
It's a Club Record!
Big Eye Tuna 54.6 kg Capture
Over the past three years, the Jervis Bay Canyons have provided some of the best tuna fishing the East Coast has seen for decades. Yellowfin to 105 kg, Southern Bluefin to 120 kg, Albacore to 31 kg and now a 54.6 kg Big Eye Tuna!
Rod Norford and his crew on Reel Quick headed to the canyons on Saturday 27/10/07 for a days lure fishing. By 7.00 am they'd boated a 16kg yellowfin on15kg and dropped an estimated 140kg plus Striped Marlin that threw a JB Lures 10" Dingo after pulling around 400 mtrs of 24kg in two minutes.
With the water cobalt blue and 18.8 degrees C, the boys left the big lures in for more Yellowfin, Striped Marlin and maybe an early season Blue.
After an uneventful five hours and the crew getting a bit restless, the boys were jolted into action when the JB Lures 12 inch Chook on the corner got smashed. Rod called it for a Blue Marlin, then changed his mind when the line started angling down steeply and called it a Yellowfin. With angler Craig Stuckey giving the 37kg standup outfit some stick, the boys had the `fin in the boat after 30 minutes, only to realize it was no Yellowfin but a Big Eye Tuna, after hi~fives allround, they cracked a couple of tinnies for the trip back to Jervis Bay.
Back at Huskisson and in front of a gathering crowd, the Big Eye weighed 54.6kg on the Jervis Bay Game Fishing Club scales, a club record. With such a rare catch, Craig had no hesitation in deciding to take it over to Fred Montebello at Callala Bay to have it mounted. The following weekend Reel Quick caught nine Yellowfin 17.4kg to 58kg, go the JB Canyons and the JB Lures!
Dave Venn,
JBGFC Life Member,
JB Lures.
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