Tag: exmouth game fishing club

King of the Reef 2025 promises fantastic fishing and prizes!

After a deluxe display of species diversity last year, the King of the Reef competition is returning from 1 May – 31 August to allow fishers to contribute to science – and have a crack at some fantastic prizes!

Recfishwest is teaming up once again with Woodside Energy and the Exmouth Game Fishing Club (EGFC) to deliver the competition, inviting fishers of all ages to wet a line at the King Reef artificial reef and surrounding areas.

In its inaugural year last year, the competition proved to be a reel-screaming success with more than 280 fish caught by nearly 80 anglers spanning 20 different species (on King Reef alone), highlighting the rich biodiversity that continues to grow in the area as a result of the artificial reef.

Home to more than 120 species, King Reef’s six large, repurposed steel structures and 49 concrete purpose-built modules spanning across an area the size of five footy fields have quickly helped it become the fastest growing artificial reef in the southern hemisphere since its deployment in 2018.

Competitors can easily enter their catches via the Track My Fish App (more info here), where the data is analysed to help improve the understanding of the value of artificial reefs in West Aussie waters.

The prize pool includes a swag of mouth-watering prizes, with the top prize of a Shimano Stella 18000 worth $1,500 sure to get fishers ‘reely’ pumped!

For more info on the competition and to enter, click here!

Recfishwest’s Artificial Reefs Approvals Officer Eligh Quigley said, “The catch data we collected from the fishing community last year helped us better understand the species diversity at the reef which has been created using repurposed infrastructure.

“By contributing to our scientific understanding of the artificial reef, participating fishers are developing greater stewardship of their local environment – another positive spin off from the competition.

“It cemented the case for deploying more artificial reefs around WA in the future, including those using repurposed infrastructure, because it’s the prime example of how an artificial reef can greatly benefit both the environment and community.”

EGFC Events Manager Ben Knaggs said there was a great range of junior (18) and senior (60) competitors last year due to the proximity of the reef to town, allowing a wider collective of fishers to easily have a crack.

“Given King Reef is only 6.4km North-East of Exmouth Marina boat ramp even families in a tinny can enjoy that species diversity excitement.

“A lot of competitions are traditionally fished fairly offshore, but you don’t need a massive boat to catch coral trout, trevally, Spanish mackerel and other top species at King Reef given it’s right on Exmouth’s doorstep.”

Make sure you give the competition a go this year and a big Recfishwest thanks to all competitors who contributed to science by logging their catches last year!

Billfish tags and fish samples galore at GAMEX 2025

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. 

Lorena Hrbut landed this cracker of a queenfish during GAMEX along with a 4.44kg spangled emperor on 3kg line, making it a pending Female Australian record!

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! 

Recfishwest operations Officer Levi De Boni with one of dozens of youngsters catching great species during the Recfishwest & Santos Family Fun Fishing Day!

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. 

Recfishwest’s Levi De Boni removing the otoliths from a Spanish mackerel provided to our Fishing for Science team at GAMEX 2025. The otoliths will be analysed by DPIRD to assess each fish’s age.

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.  

We love GAMEX and so do the kids! Check out some of these great captures from the Recfishwest & Santos Family Fun Day and kids fishing competition!

King of the Reef crown and $15k up for grabs in Exmouth Fishing for Science comp!

To celebrate the spectacular fishing on offer at Exmouth’s King Reef, Recfishwest is teaming up with Woodside Energy and the Exmouth Game Fishing Club to deliver the ’King of the Reef’ Fishing for Science competition!

The four-month-long comp invites fishers to fish around the King Reef artificial reef system and contribute to science by entering their catches via the Track My Fish App (more info here).

All entrants will be in the running for a swag of cracking fishing prizes valued at $15,000!

For more info on the King of the Reef competition check out the details below and make sure you enter the competition by clicking here!

A myriad of species 

The competition features overall, monthly and mystery length prizes for the myriad of species commonly found around King Reef such as red emperor, coral trout, Spanish mackerel, trevally and many others – all you have to do is catch them, measure them, then log the data into the App!

While entrants are not limited to fishing at King Reef, a Surge Orion fishing kayak valued at $2,000 is up for grabs for the most species caught at the reef over the competition period!

Want the best fishing tips for King Reef? Check out the amazing advice from Exmouth Tackle & Camping’s Steve Riley in the video below!

Exmouth Game Fishing Club President Ben Knaggs said, “We’re particularly happy to see so many family groups entering and competing and we’ve had kids as young as three years old already reporting solid captures.

“The King of the Reef competition also has the added benefit of providing some important catch data to Recfishwest on the wide variety of species that call this reef system home.

“The catch data submitted by competitors will help strengthen the case for more of these artificial reefs to be deployed around WA in the future.”

In 2018, a collaboration between Recfishwest, the Exmouth community and other stakeholders resulted in King Reef – the first integrated artificial reef to be deployed in the southern hemisphere. King Reef involved repurposing decommissioned steel buoys from BHP’s Griffin Field augmented with purpose-built concrete modules.

With ongoing support from Woodside, King Reef has become a biodiversity hotspot, offering new fishing opportunities and major ecological benefits. Watch the recent under water footage of King Reef captured by Blue Media Exmouth in the video below, which showcases the reef’s rapid development and biodiversity benefits!

COMPETITION DETAILS: 

SPECIES AND PRIZE DETAILS 

Recfishwest game for GAMEX 2024

Gamex is one of Australia’s biggest game fishing tournaments. Recfishwest Operations Officer Levi De Boni, a keen game angler himself, was one of our Fishing for Science team attending this year’s event. Here, he reflects back on what was another magic Gamex.    

Last week I and fellow Recfishwest employee Sam Russell headed north for the highly anticipated 56th GAMEX fishing tournament held by the Exmouth Game Fishing Club (EGFC).

This year, the tournament saw 50 boats and over 200 competitors make the most of the superb weather to battle it out for over $150,000 worth of cash and prizes in 29 competition sections.

Of the 50 boats competing, 15 were fishing the species section while the billfish section dominated, with 35 boats all trying their luck out in the deep blue. We were at the event to run the Recfishwest Fishing for Science program supported by Woodside Energy each day at the weigh-in as well as to assist with the EGFC Santos Family Fun Day and SunSmart fishing clinic.

These activities were once again given great support from the club and local community, and the significant contribution they make to the event becomes more evident year after year.

While we had our work cut out for us with over 50 fish coming through the gantry for sampling, we were lucky enough to speak with people from all over WA who have travelled to participate in the tournament, as well as some fishers coming from as far as New Zealand to compete.

Find out more about our Fishing for Science program here.

Recfishwest’s Fishing for Science team comprised of Levi De Boni and Sam Russell collected more than 50 belly samples for future analysis from numerous fish species over the course of GAMEX thanks to the kind donations of local competitors.

It was a humbling experience talking to GAMEX veterans and learning from the wealth of knowledge they’d collected over many years fishing the tournament. Being able to talk about fishing issues, concerns and ideas with the Exmouth fishing community was a fantastic experience and just one of the many reasons why I love being part of the Recfishwest team.

We were also able to catch up with EGFC Events Manager Ben Knaggs. “Knaggsy” is one of the unsung heroes of the Exmouth and Gascoyne fishing scene and huge credit must go to him and the club for making GAMEX the stellar event it is.

He told us “GAMEX has been around pretty much as long as Exmouth has and it’s really become a fabric of the community. The last economic assessment we did for GAMEX back in 2016 showed it helps inject more than one million dollars into our regional economy. Given the growth of this great competition, it would be safe to assume that amount has increased significantly,” said Ben.

See what Knaggsy had to say in our GAMEX 2024 recap video below!

This year’s tournament saw the most billfish caught in over a decade, with nearly 500 billfish tags handed in throughout the course of the tournament.

These tags were dominated by black marlin, with a great range of sizes estimated from 10kg fish right up to 220kg. There were also many sailfish tagged as well as a few striped and blue marlin. The bycatch experienced by those offshore was also impressive, with multiple wahoo and yellowfin tuna nudging 20kg. Some fishers also reported good catches of dolphinfish on the FADs, with captures recorded as little as 24-hours after deployment, proving the value of deploying these devices prior to GAMEX in the future.

From a game fishing perspective, some of the most prestigious captures during the competition were the pending record claims. This included an Australian small fry dolphinfish record of 6.48kg caught on 1kg line by Dean Gates, an Australian small fry dolphinfish record of 4.16kg on 2kg line by Luke Mounsey, an Australian junior dolphinfish record of 7.90kg on 2kg line by Kalvin Gates and a Western Australian women’s black marlin record of 22.78kg caught on 3kg line by Nikki Sutton.

It is worth noting that we had the privilege of sampling Nikki’s impressive black marlin catch before filleting the fish and giving out fillets to the local community. Black marlin are known for their fast growth rates and this fish was estimated at under two years old.

On top of the economic value that GAMEX provides, it is obvious how important the event is to the local community. From a social standpoint, it’s a firm and hotly anticipated fixture in the Exmouth, regional, State-wide and national fishing calendar, bringing together like-minded people and teaching the younger generation the immense enjoyment and value that low impact sportfishing brings to regional communities.

All in all it was another great year of GAMEX, I’d like to extend a massive Recfishwest thanks to Knaggsy and the whole EGFC community for having us. We had a blast and I look forward to returning next year to see the great fishing continue and the tournament to continue to grow into the future.