DAVID GREEN
48 | fishingworld.com.au | March 2015
YESTERDAY we went offshore from the Gold
Coast Seaway for a troll in good conditions.
There had been reports of plenty of juvenile
small black marlin in the previous week, and
we set the lures on the inshore grounds and
worked the close reefs.
Usually the little black marlin turn up off
the Gold Coast in mid-December, and the
numbers vary from year to year. I’ve been
chasing these fish for more than 35 years now
and over time have learnt a fair bit about their
often fickle ways. And for the past 32 years one
of my reels has been trolling with me, my Penn
International 20. I bought this reel in 1983
when Tim Simpson was manager of the
Compleat Angler’s Sydney store. It cost about
$300, an expensive reel at the time. Simmo was
always a good salesman and reckoned the reel
would last many years.
The Inter 20 trolls from the shotgun position.
There’s a very good reason for this. In the
shotgun position the reel is high up in the rocket
launcher on the top of the centre cabin and
when you’ve got cricket on the radio you’ve got
to have a reel with a ratchet that screams loudly
when a marlin snaff les the lure. I remember
using other reels in the shotgun position where
the ratchet wasn’t loud enough. On one occasion
the rod was strangely bent and there was a
striped tuna being dragged along on 600m of
line tied to the reel spindle. On another occasion
there was a loud crack and a big marlin leaping
into the next postcode. But that Inter screams
like a banshee so you always hear a strike.
On this day we trolled the inshore grounds
down near the Tweed River entrance but it
was strangely quiet. The Tweed Nine Mile
Reef had bait and birds but no marlin. It was
day three of the second test against India and
we lost two early wickets, which was a worry,
but when there’s cricket on the radio the
fishing is generally good. I headed the boat
out wider, trolling a nice current line and set
course for a wider ground east of Broadbeach
some 20kms to the north-east. On this troll
Mitchell Johnson went from zero to 70!
Things were looking up both in the cricket
and the water. We had our first billfish strike
on the short lure half way along this journey.
It was a f lea of a marlin, probably only
around 10 kilos, and when the hook stung it
the baby billfish spat out the lure and swam
home to its mummy.
Steve Smith cracked a superb ton and to
celebrate the Penn Inter let out its characteristic30 Years With An Inter!
This past season has been a cracker for marlin. Earlier
in the year Greeny spent a lot of time trolling and reminicing
about a game reel that’s caught him fish for more than 30 years.
A LONG-TIME FISHO CORRESPONDENT, DAVID GREEN ENJOYS CATCHING
E VERY THING FROM FL ATHE AD TO MARLIN.Sean Frendin with his first black marlin. The reel he caught it on, a Penn International 20
bought by Greeny in 198 3, has been responsible for countless fish over the past 30-odd years.