Billfish fever takes Darwin by storm

I FINALLY managed to have a crack at the run of sailfish being experienced by Darwin anglers off Dundee at the moment

Lucky angler Dale Egan with his first sailfish.

I FINALLY managed to have a crack at the run of sailfish being experienced by Darwin anglers off Dundee at the moment.

On Sunday, I launched my boat at the Dundee ramp and headed out to the billfish grounds where many sailfish and the odd black marlin have been landed over the last couple of months. The weather forecast was sensational, and it did not take long to travel about 35km southwest of the ramp fishing wide of Bowra shoals. Amazingly I counted another 18 boats doing the same thing. Billfish fever has indeed taken Darwin by storm.

I was fishing with good mates Wayne Baldwin and Dale Egan. Our main aim was to get Dale his first sailfish.

Wayne rigged up three nice garfish to skip along on the surface. We also dropped a couple of daisy chain teasers in to hopefully attract the sails towards our skipping gars.

We commenced trolling around 8.30am and about 10am Wayne sighted a sail up behind one of the gars.

Dale grabbed the rod and immediately free spooled the gar as the sail took it down and swam away. He loaded up on the fish shortly after and hooked up on his first sail.

The beautiful fish took to the air and jumped around all over the place. Dale took his time on 10kg line and soon had his first sail beside the boat.

Wayne tagged the sail and we took a couple of quick pics in the water beside the boat before releasing it. We were all pretty pumped for Dale.

We continued trolling, but did not experience any more action until later in the afternoon when a pod of four sailfish appeared in our spread behind the boat.

All three lines peeled off in different directions as pure mayhem ensued. Unfortunately, Wayne and I dropped our fish after a few jumps, but Dale managed to hold onto his and land his second sail for the day. What an achievement.