A Sunday Adventure Catching Striped Marlin and Encountering Whales
- Stephen Williams
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
On Sunday the 12/4/26 the weather gods decide it was time to turn the weather on (for the morning at least).
We decide to head to a spot nearly 35nm to the north of Mornington where I had previously labelled as the land of the giants. There are several other coral structures that rise out of our deep (30-40m 🤣) along the way that we tried to have a fish as the sun rose.
Unfortunately, as we feared was going to happen, the tax man was out in force! The first few spots we tried ended in heart break with 0 to us and about 10 to the tax man and maybe to a few Spanish/Barracuda. The first 2 Squidtrex dropped in got promptly snipped off on descent.. Bye bye $50 in a blink of the eye.
After being taxed way to heavily, we moved onto the main spot. However, just short of arriving we spotted a small pod of dolphins and other pelagic species working the dawn light. Jaimie had a quick cast with ambitions of catching a tuna for sushi, much to our surprise it was not a tuna she hook but a nice little Striped Marlin.
I've seen them swimming under the boat before but never had the opportunity to land one. This one was released and swam off happy.
From there we headed straight into more disappointment. At the spot I had previously labeled the land of the giants, turned out to be land of the sharks! We managed to get 1 Chinaman and 1 Parrot to the top, everything else got chopped by sharks!! Endangered pftttt yeh right!!
We even had a troll around and within that 5 minutes we had managed to land 3 sharks (on the troll) the biggest one being around 7 foot and a 1.5m long Barracuda!. Gave that up for a joke and I'm still sporting the bruises from them!
Next I wanted to go and check out some new ground about 10nm away, so off we headed. Boy was I glad we did. 4nm from the spot we came across masses of tuna working the topwater and long behold, right in the middle.... was a Whale, very rare for us to see them here in the Gulf, I think it was a Minke. It stayed in the bait schools for a good 10 minutes where we witnessed it dive and spy hop on several occasions.
We landed a tuna and off we went. The ground I was looking for didn't eventuate and by this time the weatherman decided to side with the tax man and let the forecast change from 5knots to 10-15knots. With a 15 nm run to get to the nearest islands, we headed off. Bounced all the way(thanks weatherman!), once we got to Rocky island we found shelter in turtle cove and had a fry up with some parrot we caught for lunch, then had a snorkel. The water was nice and clear, little chilly at 28 degrees but I managed. Caught a cray for dinner then decided to travel the 28nm back to base.
What a great day out on the water even though we had no luck with the Red Emperor or the Coral Trout! Lets hope the weather can turn on again soon so I can get in for a few dives! Loads more adventures to come!
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