Here is a quick recount of the Bermagui Blue Water Classic.
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In the not so nice conditions we ran over the fish attractor called Witch Doctor. Forbes did a triple somersault with six twists off the boat's roof to get it – that’s exactly what happened.
I may have embellished a bit on the somersault, twists and the roof dive, but Forbes did strip off and dive in to get said Witch Doctor.
I have to say that as he was stripping off, I thought he wasn't serious. We were in 146.8 meters of water, out on the 12 mile, in a three metre swell, with a current running at three kph from the north and a south westerly wind blowing (that went through my head a hell of a lot faster than what it took to write).
The next thing, he’s in the water swimming towards the Witch Doctor. Remember this is a tool to attract big fish.
Len was driving the boat and didn’t see what happened, so I called out "take the boat out of gear" as I had to pull in the lines. He puts it in neutral, turns and says “where is Jamin?”.
I point to about 15 metres behind the boat while I pull our live baits in, again used to catch big fish.
Len does a double-take, says "gosh, what’s he doing?"
Now I have one bait up near the motor and Len throws the boat into gear, and of course wraps itself around the prop, which means I have to cut it while we are having a little discussion about putting it in neutral and pulling the other line in.
We have a quick look to see where Forbes is and in the five or 10 seconds, he has travelled about 100 metres away from the boat. Just a little bit about Forbes, he is a very fit man, a very strong swimmer and not a great deal fazes him – obviously.
So we get over to him in no time flat and he gets back in the boat as if nothing happened. Then he tells us the trailing ribbons on the Witch Doctor wrapped around his legs and he couldn’t kick his feet, Len's and my heart rate, which was a little up at that time, went up another couple of beats if that was possible.
So we drift for a couple of minutes taking in what actually happened. While Len and I try to recoup, Forbes is re-baiting the rod to throw a bait back out, picks up the rod with the cut line and asks what happened.
I asked Len to raise the motor and there is about 30 metres of line and a 200 pound leader wrapped around the prop, I reach to grab the line, when there is a splash behind the boat and Forbes is back in the water to untangle the line, fair dinkum.
Now I think very highly of him as a friend, a fisherman and an academic, and I’m pretty sure when he got back in the boat for the second time, I said something like "you go in that water again and I’m gonna knock you out or we are gonna leave, you here?" or something like that.
That was about as much excitement as we had, we raised a couple more marlin and something had a go at the Witch Doctor. The weather in the mornings wasn’t the best, but still easily fishable and pretty much glassed out in the afternoon.
There were two tiger sharks caught over the weekend, one was around the 280kg mark. I have to say they were caught on the shelf and nowhere near us, but it makes for good reading.