The coronavirus has hit our industry, like many others hard. Overseas travelers are not allowed to enter Australia for the foreseeable future (at least into 2021) and so many bookings have been cancelled.  Things were looking up in June and July when much of the country came out of lockdown, but again the corona virus has struck. Currently borders are closed between Queensland and the country’s two largest states – Victoria and NSW.  What this means for many of us in the fleet is more cancellations and a much shorter season than normal.

But we will be fishing!

You might have been wondering why, at this time of year you haven’t heard more about marlin season like you normally would. So I wanted to tell you why. This is why.

Some of our regulars will unfortunately miss this season entirely due to being stuck overseas or boats being locked out of the state due to the border restrictions, but many of us will be there a bit later than normal.

Reports will come in as we start fishing!

Some past reports to get you excited:

• First grander report of 2014 on 22 Sept.
• First grander report of 2016 on 17 Sept.
• First grander report of 2017 on 27 Sept.
• First grander report of 2019 on 16 Sept.

The future of BMB

It has been difficult for me to write BMB this year with all the uncertainly regarding travel restrictions and lockdowns and the flow on mindset affects. Its been difficult to find the enthusiasm and motivation that comes natural in other years when the fishing is normal given the challenges the industry is facing. But the blog will continue and I hope to maintain it in some form for a long time to come as I believe it is a historical record of the Cairns marlin season in particular, but also the Australian marlin industry in general. And we need these historical records.

And I’m open to any suggestions for improvements that readers may have.

But in the meantime I have two things on my mind for improvements:

Significant Catches

I’ve introduced a category called “Significant Catches” which is just exactly what it sounds like. A way to tag reports that contain something truly significant, a first or outstanding. You can find the category results here. You will find the results very very short so far..1 to be exact! This is where I need readers help to identify reports from over the past 15 years of the blog that you believe fall into this category.

Have you ever used the search function at the top of the page or looked for reports via the archive page? They are both very powerful tools for mining data within the reports. Whenever I’m looking for information about something that’s happened in marlin fishing past, that is how I find it. Using these tools, simply send me the link of the report you believe should be in this category!

Catch up reporting

Secondly some reports are missed or details lacking due to time and technology restraints. But down the track you may with to add a report, add more to a report, or even just add photos to a report.  We have the technology. In keeping in mind that this is a historical report of the fishery, it would be great to fill in some gaps so please do send these in and they can be filed in the date they happened (even pre-2005 when the blog started). Expanding the historical record.

Please contact me via the contact form on the website or via email. You can also text me although I have to apologise as I’m not a telephone person and very rarely answer calls although I am responsive to text ;-)

In the meantime I’m very much looking forward to seeing familiar faces up on the reef this year and have some ideas of how to introduce some of those faces to you all via the blog. To help you get excited about whats to come, I’ve included again the documentary below filmed by the very talented Nick Jones on behalf of the Cairns Professional Game Fishing Association in 2019.

All the best,