WORLD RECORD CATCHES

May 2002: Capt Bill Billson and his crew with angler Tom Evans from The USA claim 2 world flyfishing records in a week!

131 kg Blue Marlin caught on 10 kg tippet in the waters off Port Stephens, NSW. Not only is it the biggest Blue Marlin caught on 10 kg tippet it is also the BIGGEST fish of any species ever caught on fly fishing tackle in the world.

105 kg Striped Marlin caught on 8 KG tippet in the waters off Ulladulla, NSW! The biggest Striped Marlin caught on 8 kg tippet in the world to date!

Congratulations to angler Tom Evans for this outstanding feat!!!

Thomas Evans Jnr, from Wyoming, USA, first smashed the 8kg (16lb) class tippet for striped marlin with a 104kg (230lb) fish caught off Ulladulla, then backed it up one week later in taking the 10kg (20lb) tippet record for blue marlin, weighing in a remarkable fish of 131kg (288lb) at Port Stephens.

Tom fished on Bill Billson's Viking II, with a hand-picked team. The team included the pairing of Billson and saltwater fly maestro, Dean Butler with crewmen, Justin 'Flash' Reid (a marlin captain in his own right) and Jim Bladin. Arguably, this is the best marlin on fly team ever assembled, and from my observations over the days I rode with them on the south coast, they were poetry in motion.

The south coast really turned on the fishing, with plenty of big, fat 'stripes' on offer. In fact, a lot of the fish were simply too big. Tom was hooking up to three world records every day, and certainly they fought - and came very close to landing - some truly big stripes.

The striped marlin weighing 104.7kg on 8kg fish is now the largest of that species weighed on IGFA regulation fly tackle.

Shortly after weighing the stripey, the crew returned to Port Stephens and capped off a memorable trip by also smashing the 10kg tippet blue marlin record on the last day of the charter. With the NSW Interclub in full swing, Billson travelled wide of Seal Rocks to find some room.

"At first the team was ecstatic to simply have hooked a blue of such size, and we probably didn't really expect to land it," said Bill.

All changed when they withstood the best leaps and line-burning runs the marlin could throw at them. After around an hour of fight time, the fish was brought onboard, to the delight of angler and crew.

It eclipsed the existing record blue - an 119kg Costa Rican fish - by over 10kg and became the largest billfish ever captured with IGFA fly tackle. - Ian "Barra" Miller