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NEWSLINESLeft: Fraser Island and
Hervey Bay’s prolific winter/
spring run of baby black
marlin provides exceptional
light-tackle or tease-and-
switch fly fishing action.
Below: Barry Alty’s Gold
Coast charterboat Mistress
heads out from Fraser Island
for a day in the deep water
beyond the continental shelf
looking for huge blue marlin.Fraser Island
even better
this year
With my son Capt Brett Alty at the helm,
our Gold Coast charterboat Mistress
ventured north in early May for our
annual expedition to Fraser Island and
Hervey Bay chasing the region’s winter/
spring runs of large blues, blacks and
striped marlin on heavy-tackle out wide,
plus light-tackle baby blacks inside the
bay. Ethan Hoggard was running the
deck, accompanied by a delivery team of
Gold Coast Game Fishing Club members.
After nine days of fishing they’d already
released 18 marlin.
Then it got interesting. I joined the boat
to fish for the first time in 10 months,
having regained some strength after a
medical concern. To test my stability
aboard, we decided to fish light-tackle
for the baby blacks initially. Four-and-a-
half days later we had tagged or released
a total of 66 little blacks, all caught by
switching from daisy-chain teasers to
either live slimies or yellowtail. We soon
ran out of tags, but our good friend David
McMaster, of the successful Sunshine
Coast boat Pole Dancer, lent us some
more. His team also did exceptionally well,
catching the little blacks on 4kg tackle.
The charterboat Kekoa was there withus for a while. With Capt Luke Fallon at
the helm and his wife Kelly running the
deck, owner Scott finished with 39 marlin
released over two-and-a-half days of
fishing. Local trailerboat Hold Fast also
joined us for a couple of days, catching
nine marlin on their first day. On our last
two days we had four local trailerboats
fishing nearby, and they were all catching
marlin!
Another fascinating aspect of this Fraser
Island winter fishing vicinity is that we
were catching black marlin as small as 1.
to 2kg. These marlin are only two to three
months old, which is further evidence that
there must be a black marlin breeding
ground in the vicinity, with spawning
taking place sometime around February
to March – which is significantly later thanthe known spawning occurring in October
and November up off Cairns.
I don`t think that there is any other
fishery in the world where you can rack
up such impressive numbers of little
black marlin. And when you add to that
the numbers of larger blues, blacks and
striped marlin out wide off Fraser Island
on the shelf edge you have an extremely
prolific marlin fishery covering both ends
of the tackle spectrum at the same time.
We thought we were doing well last
year with 104 marlin released in the 42
days of our Fraser Island sojourn, but
this year, in the 13.5 days we fished
up to the beginning of June, we have
already released 84 marlin. Incredible
fishing indeed!- Barry Alty
Ethan Hoggard releases yet another baby black marlin for Barry Alty aboard his charterboat Mistress
while fishing light-tackle off Fraser Island.