Latest Exmouth Fishing Report - Courtesy of Scott Forbes (EGFC)

Whether you are chasing fish from the shore or from a boat this week, it’s all happening in Exmouth. As long as you are not chasing fish for the ABC radio of a morning in the marina! Yes, that was me last week before the Whaleshark Festival at the Exmouth Game Fishing Club house pad, talking fishing with Andrew from the ABC. The warm morning was absolutely sensational with no wind, no sandflies, plenty of fish busting up on the surface, an amazing sunrise with scattered cloud… but do you think we could land a fish? No, but the whole experience of getting out fishing is why so many of us enjoy it: catching a fish is really a bonus.

The WhaleShark Festival was a great success and we would like to make special thanks from the Exmouth Game Fishing Club to Des and Cathy Ryan for their help with the sausage sizzle. Jo Decker was there from start to finish and others that helped included Brian Snook (shame about the Eagles Snooky) and Scott Forbes. The winner of the Mako sunglasses raffle was Scott Forbes, which was well deserved after buying so many tickets himself! Trisel access car park has been loaded with cars of a morning as the regular anglers have been getting in to the queenfish along the west side.

Off shore the mackerel have been starting to show up in numbers. Directly in front of Tantabiddi passage in about 70-100m there have been plenty of billfish. Neil Endersby, Steve Marwick and other friends managed to tag five billfish on Tuesday. The biggest was a blue approximately 170kg and the smallest was a black around 15kg.

The boys also raised some sailfish and tagged two marlin on a double hook-up the next day. It is a week they say they will never forget and have made plans to return later in the year for the Betta Electrical Billfish Bonanza. I am pleased to say that I managed to get out for a reef fish with some friends recently and on the first drop landed a beautiful red emperor. We also landed rankin cod, gold band job fish, robinson sea bream, crimson sea perch and a rather cute looking long finned snapper.