Richards Bay South Africa Fishing report 11November 2007

[gamefish]

I love it when a plan comes together!

My interest in Marlin fishing and the 34ft Black Watch (now the DeepVee 340) boat go back a long way to the days when I could only dream of owning one of these fine boats that had established themselves worldwide as excellent sea-boats with an unreal ability to consistently raise fish.

That day, way back on 12 October 2003 when with our first spread, on our first fishing day, we caught our first Black Marlin, the dream finally became a reality, and is not only forever etched into our minds, but things just kept on getting better.

6 December 2003 produced 3 marlin on one day and the first season ended with 19 billfish caught in under 200 hours on the water and winning the first Blackwatch Billfish Tournament.

The 2007/8 season started off with a bang for Black Watch, fishing Pulsator Lures, despite persistent bad weather still severely limiting our fishing effort.
· 2 September 2007 - Yellowfin of 43,4 kg
· 13 October 2007 - a Blue and a Striped Marlin and two +-40kg tunas
· 11November 2007 – The day produced a Black and Striped marlin and a shortbill Spearfish, all successfully tagged and released by 11 in the morning. This suddenly made a slam??? very possible. Going flat out for a Blue thereafter produced another Black later in the day, which unfortunately got off after a few minutes and the steadily strengthening North Easter prevented us from getting out as deep as we would have loved to. (All of this season’s catches to date, were made with Pulstor amd older original Williamson lures, with the blue and white slant head Pulsator producing consistently.)

However, now with 6 new addicts, 5 of whom caught their first ever billfish we are very happy with the result thus far. We firmly believe that these catches are indicative of a very good season to follow.

We cannot wait for the 2008 Blackwatch Billfish and the FIPS world championship in january

http://forums.marlinmag.com/photos/s...0/ppuser/24737
gamefish

[Seth]

The yellowfin is a nice catch. I am sure it gave a good fight.
Did this marlin die or was it killed? Do you usually take your marlin catches back to the dock?

[gamefish]

Dear Seth,

I am not quite sure where you are coming from and I do not really like to blow my own whistle but I guess your post demands a response.
Firstly it took me over 20 years to catch my first billfish and to this day, I have never personally boated any billfish as my personal catch. However, I have made the realisation of a dream possible for a large number of people, and in that I take pride!
If you took the trouble to visit my website www.blackwatchsa.co.za you would have noted that I am absolutely in favour of releasing fish and have in fact started and still convene the first and only all-release tournament in South Africa.
I run my boat as a hobby, weekends only. Not only have we accounted for maybe 90% or the recorded releases in our homeport, but we can easily claim a 95% plus release rate.
We do however from time to time take special fish - if we did not, you would not even know about us. Personally I have been a member of the ORI tag and release programme since '95 and have gone out of my way to encourage more people to release more fish and enforce a size limit on my boat where I do not even give them a choice. Having said that, at the end of the day it still every angler's right to keep his catch should he wish to do so.
gamefish