I was not a founder member but gained membership shortly after in 1983 and fished the HIBT that year for the first time with  Bob Frazier, Pat Carpenter and Paul Wong. I then fished the AIBT  at Tangalooma in April of 1984 with Warwick Armitage and Roy Laverty then in July with KC Au and Gay Yan we fished the 6 th JIBT at Miyake Jima where I caught my fist Blue Marlin (a then Japanese record on 24kg) and won the tournament.

The Marlin that Roy talks about that was hooked in Hong Kong was by Paul Wong aboard a 32 or 34 ft Chung Kwa  called " Hakelau " . A Taiwanese copy of a grandbanks that was owned jointly by Jack Symons, Roger Stuart, Warwick Armitage and Noel Jones. Not sure of the date but it would have been around 1986-7.

Roger Stuart may have a better memory and you try him at hunter611@msn.com

Have just had Ralf down fishing for a couple of days and whilst the strike and hook up rate was good we only tagged 2 blacks and 1 sail out of a 11-7-3 ( Strikes, Hook ups, captures).

Have a tournament coming up in april (23 & 24 ) which we will probably fish heavy tackle for Blues. It's a long run about 40 nm miles but there appears to be a few fish around. One saturday (2 weeks back) one boat tagged 6 Blue Marlin from 10 shots with 2 of them over 600Lbs.

Next year is the 50th year of fishing for big Blacks off Cairns and some celebrations and a tournament is planned and at this stage I am looking at taking Kajiki up for the season and will do a couple of light tackle tournaments on the way . So from late august. early Setemebr until early December will have the boat up north. The plan is NOT to do charters but fish friends/Mandarins for the cost of fuel and food plus deckie wages etc. Mind you that could still work out at around A$1500 max which is at least A$1,000 less than you would normally pay.Will advise more details as and when known for publication on the web site.

Cheers

Noel.