For 57 years, GAMEX has cemented itself as one of Australia’s biggest and best fishing tournaments. Recfishwest Operations Officer Levi De Boni, an avid game fisher himself, was on the frontlines with our Fishing for Science team attending this year’s event. Here is his reflection on another brilliant GAMEX tournament.
Fellow Recfishwest employee Sam Russell and I headed north for the highly anticipated 57th GAMEX fishing tournament held by the Exmouth Game Fishing Club (EGFC).
This year, the tournament saw 60 boats and over 240 competitors make the most of the very hot, yet glamourous conditions to battle it out for over $140,000 worth of cash and prizes in 25 competition categories.
Of the 60 boats competing, a large proportion targeted the billfish sections of the competition out in the deep blue, encountering good numbers of sailfish as well as black and blue marlin, while the remainder were aiming to find as many different species on as many different line classes as possible.
This year’s tournament saw a great haul of catches. 780 billfish were raised, 585 hooked and 350 tagged in total. Of those 350 billfish tagged, 180 were black marlin, 147 were sailfish and the remaining 23 were blue marlin.
Recfishwest’s Fishing for Science program supported by Woodside Energy returned for the daily weigh-ins and a wide range of impressive Gascoyne species rolled in, including various mackerel, trevally, billfish, tuna and many others.
This year, the team also took otoliths from the mackerel and wahoo that came through which will directly inform DPIRD’s future mackerel stock assessments, a big thanks to all competitors who allowed us to sample their catch!
Find out more about our Fishing for Science program here.
Our team also assisted with the Recfishwest & Santos Family Fun Day and kids’ fishing clinic, where more than 100 kids turned up to wet a line and thoroughly enjoyed catching some great species including trevally, bream, tuskfish and even a juvenile coral trout!
Every year, these great events are given great support from the club and local community, with crowds of people across all ages having a yarn and checking out the eye-catching species on our Fishing for Science table.
We were lucky enough to speak with people from all over WA and interstate who travelled to participate in the tournament. Thanks to their willingness to contribute their catches to science, our team recorded at least 50 fish coming through the gantry, with dolphinfish, Spanish mackerel and wahoo making up the brunt of the species being presented for sampling.
EGFC Events Manager Ben Knaggs did a brilliant job coordinating another packed GAMEX tournament and Knaggsy’s dedication to this event over the past seven years has made him one of the unsung heroes of the Exmouth fishing community.
“Given the cost of living pressures going on at the moment we weren’t sure how many boats and competitors would turn up this year, but our numbers were well up from 2024 and it’s one of the biggest GAMEX turnouts for many years, which was great to see,” said Ben.
“This event has been around almost as long as Exmouth has and it’s now a fabric of the community that sees more than a million dollars contributed into our regional economy, so the attraction of our world-class fishing is incredibly important for our region.”
Notable catches
Some impressive catches included one that was logged before the competition had even started! Perth Game Fishing Club member Lochie Turrell and the crew on Seatrix weighed in a pending state record 84.6kg black marlin on 8kg line! Lochie followed up this great effort with a cracking 14.12kg wahoo on 4kg line during the competition, a pending Junior Male Australian record.
Other pending records included Kalvin Gates’ 4.04kg gold spot trevally on 2kg line (pending Junior Male Australian record) and Neve Hallat’s 6.34kg golden trevally on 2kg line (pending Small Fry Female Australian record).
We would like to extend a huge Recfishwest thanks to Knaggsy and the whole EGFC community for having us, we absolutely love this event and we look forward to seeing this tournament continue to grow in popularity into the future.
