The Great Marlin Race

On Sunday, October 2, the Silver Anniversary 25th Lizard Island Black Marlin Classic tournament began. Through the generous support of Peter Teakle, five pop-up satellite tags were provided to the tournament to be deployed on black marlin as a “Blacks vs. Blues” challenge to the blue marlin tagged at the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament. The idea, initiated by Bob Lowe, President of the Lizard Island Game Fish Club, was to deploy tags on some of the spectacular black marlin caught during the tournament and compare their migrations to those of their blue cousins tagged off the Kona Coast in August.

The first tag was deployed on October 4 on a 900 lb. monster caught by angler Andrey Grigoriev, fishing on the Moana III. Tag 2 went out the next day on a 250-pounder caught by Phill Scott on the Reelistic. October 6 saw a third tag deployed on another big 850-lb. girl, caught by Chris Caron on the Castille III.

Tags 4 and 5 went out the following week; Tag 4 on a 200-pound fish caught by Parke Berolzheimer on the Allure, and Tag 5 on a giant 900-pounder caught by Bill Borkan on the Castille III.

As of the time of this writing, none of the Lizard Island tags have popped up prematurely. Over the weeks and months ahead we’ll be keeping our eyes open for tags popping up, and updating this site as new tags are released.