February is pretty much the heart of the NZ game fishing season and this years February was no exception to the history books.

WWGFC members were spread up and down the coast for most of the month attending many of the awesome competitions on offer or simply enjoying a spot of fishing. It never seized to amaze me when one of our boats popped out from a nook in the coastline or fumbled its way towards us in 200m of water before ensuing in a friendly VHF conversation which more often than not just added more confusion on where to go next. This season I have found that a six pack of beer takes the edge off most things.

After a dozen beers down most things just get laughed at and the focus of catching a fish turns to more important things such as ensuring there are more cold beers on hand and dinner is taken care of. As for the gins and rums, well they just give you headaches!

The Whangaroa One Base tournament was almost a WWGFC flood out with a total of 40+ WWGFC members attending out of the 160 odd anglers fishing for the top spots. A special mention goes out to Logan Campbell and Peter Matheson who have fished this competition for the last 38 years in a row. Talk about committed to the cause!

Without harping on about a full five day report, the general guts of the competition was that most boats found a fish or two, while some were fortunate to find a fish or two that actually stuck on the hook! Rod Jones and crew didn’t spare any horses on the first day and by 10am he had tagged a stroppy little striped marlin, the first of the competition. While everyone fished pretty hard, the standout fish had to be a 235.2kg Blue Marlin caught by Sam Jukes aboard E llusive – not a bad way to tick off Sam’s maiden marlin!