The local reefs such as Bandit, Wollongong and Trap, absolutely fired late last week and across the weekend with untold numbers of marlin raised, hooked, tagged and captured with some boats recording numbers of 8-6-6 last Friday with many more getting close to that over the weekend.

Many anglers were rewarded with their first ever marlin by slow trolling livies around the absolute abundance of bait schools that were everywhere and the billies ranged from 50 kilo to well over 100 plus and all appeared to be blacks.

Dolphin fish were also all over the place and not necessarily on the FADS, but again the bigger bulls still played hard to get.

With the upcoming Shellharbour Game Fishing Tournament this weekend, the anticipation for another weekend of ridiculous marlin bites is extremely high with quite a few fish being taken at the same reefs earlier this week.

For those not caught up in the marlin mayhem, the fishing has been just as good for snapper with multiple fish over the 3kg mark being found.

Sam Anderson got his biggest reddie for quite some time and was proud as punch when he weighed it in at the shop stopping the scales at a bit over the 3.4 kilo mark.

Alas his elation at top billing on the in-store biggest fish comp was short lived as Michael Felgate brought in his PB red that weighed just 200 grams heavier to nudge Sam to 2nd spot.

Along with the snapper, there were some teraglin and sampson fish as well as big bonito and frigate mackerel and the flathead bite continued with again some quality fish nudging the one kilo mark at all the usual beach drifts.

Beaches have continued to fish well with a couple of rumours of some big 30 kilo plus mulloway caught locally.

However there were still plenty of smaller school jewies about as teasers and the bream, whiting and flathead were about off most beaches too.                                                                                        www.reeldealfishing.com.au