Age is no barrier to landing the big time billfish
Catching a marlin is high on the agenda for most anglers, and why not, they are arguably one of the most spectacular to catch, especially with their aerial displays. Now, in Australia, we have three species: black, blue and striped. Catching one is an achievement but scoring all three is the ultimate. Known as a grand slam it is something all anglers dream about, yet very few ever score.
It’s a privilege to catch just one marlin but to get all three in your home waters is as good as it gets. Luckily, in Australia, marlin are prolific along the east and west coasts, especially in NSW where all three are common. Catching a black, blue or striped marlin is definitely on the cards for those that are willing to commit and have a bit of lady luck on their side. It usually takes years of hard work but if you put in the hours you will see the results, but how about if I told you that someone cracked it in a couple of months – at just nine years of age!
Nine-year-old Cooper McGlashan started off his billfishing career with a black marlin off Port Stephens, just a couple hours drive north of Sydney on the 1st of January this year. It was the tail end of an amazing bite that saw us tally a few stripes and blacks, but for Coops catching his first triggered a passion like no other. Now I know I fish for a living but I have never seen eagerness like it; as soon as he hooked up he was hooked big time. The black was perfectly suited at 50kg and jumped all over the place like an acrobat at the circus.
I am not one for pushing kids if they are not keen, instead I prefer to support and encourage them but there was no stopping him. Suddenly, he was nagging to marlin fish every single day, rain, hail or shine. A few weeks later we were down the coast at Kiama and straight up scored a double hook on striped marlin. Now, despite the fact the rest of the crew had driven all the way from Melbourne to catch a few billfish, somehow Cooper got past them and was the first to get to the rods as part of a double hook up.
Catching a double header is hard enough at the best of times but when you have a nine year old on the rod suddenly complicates matters. Worse still, he was on the spin reel instead of the game outfit, which is easier to fight as it can be harnessed in, so we really had our work cut out for us. That didn’t stop Coops who decided he needed to increase the drag and somehow got his striped marlin to the boat first.
With two species down he suddenly discovered an appetite for a blue marlin, however, with one of the best inshore striped and black marlins bites in history he had to be content catching those for another month, talk about a tough life.
Catching the smaller stripes and blacks is a whole lot easier when compared to the might of the much larger blue marlin. However, fighting them is one thing, finding them can be even harder. Enigmatic in nature the blues prefer to reside wider offshore beyond the continental shelf in no man’s land. They don’t stack up on the bait schools like the other two making them a much harder proposition.
Still, if there is one thing Coops has it’s lots of luck and, would you believe it, we had a late season flush of hot water push down the coast bringing with it Sydney’s best run of blue marlin ever. Normally blue marlin in NSW are in the 160-240kg range, however, this run of hot water brought with an unseasonal run of smaller blue marlin in the 80-120kg range, which are slightly easier option to tackle, especially for a nine year old.
So with some calm weather coming up Cooper somehow convinced his mum to give him a day off school to have crack at a blue. He picked the right day and we had three bites by lunchtime. Cooper was delegated last on strike since he was the smallest but he finally got his shot. It took an hour but he cracked it and got his blue marlin successfully sealing his grand slam!
It’s ridiculous to think how hard I worked to get my grand slam so many years ago, but I think I was more excited to see him get it. The moral behind this story is not about proud parents boasting about their kids, instead its all about getting more kids out their fishing and fulfilling their dreams. There are no two ways about it, we need to get more kids out there enjoying it and experiencing the amazing fishing we have on offer. Being outdoors with the family is so much better than playing video games and once you get them out there doing it they will be hooked big time!
