The autumn steadily progresses as winter waits in the wings and it really looks as if this year will go down as one of the more lacklustre for sports fishing.There may be a couple of intra-club fun tournaments left but, at this stage, most of the internal annual awards have just about been sorted out and there are no events that will involve the general public. Basically, but for the commercial anglers, and not even all of them, fishing is on the backburner of life, simmering away.Some effort is being put in, but not the sort that would have anglers taking days of work and running offshore in the hopes of a late season bonanza.There have been a few respectable hauls of wahoo with the emphasis on size rather than numbers even though a few forays have managed to produce double figures for some lucky boats.The average size of the fish is better than 30 pounds and there have been some up to about 65 pounds. Nice enough, but more shots at more fish would be better than the odd single here and there. There have been s few good days for the fleet, but, unfortunately, these have been few and pretty far between.There has been little pattern to the catching with the action cropping up at various locations around the Island with no notable trend in movement.For this reason, many of the commercial operators; who, at the end of the day are the best source of intelligence for the offshore scene, have reverted back to the tried and proven method of ensuring a catch and that is to concentrate on bottom fishing with drifting on the Banks probably the most preferred method. It is economical from a fuel point of view and just about whatever is caught enjoys a ready market at both the wholesale and retail levels.Most of the catch, in terms of numbers, is made up of members of the grouper family: in this case, coneys, barbers and red hinds.The latter are the preferred capture as they are larger and are in demand. The smaller fish generally are filleted and it takes three or four to make up a pound of fillet.The weight comes from the so-called “floating fish” primarily members of the jack family: amberfish, Almaco jacks (bonitas) and the occasional gwelly. Really choice fish might be monkey or flag rockfish which although not numerous, tend to be the largest grouper that you are likely to catch while drifting.The biggest member of the family here is the black rockfish but that is not usually caught on the Banks or on the drift. The catching of these is a bit of a speciality in its own right and often occurs much closer to land.Another option for the offshore is chumming. On the Banks, this will attract rainbow runners, jacks and possibly mackerel, none of which is considered prime market fish. Blackfin tuna should also show up, particularly if the chum is running on to the bank. There are also a few small yellowfin tuna around but, while these do provide some action and variety for the sportsman, they don’t do a whole lot from the commercial aspect.A better move might be to chum on Bermuda’s Edge. Although they have been somewhat ignored in recent years, there should be enough yellowtail snapper out there to fill the odd fish box or two and this is another highly marketable species. There are all sorts of stories about it being best at night and that sand is a necessity but neither is a hard and fast rule. There are plenty of nice yellowtails caught during the daylight hours with just normal old-fashioned chumming paying off. The crowns of the Banks, particularly Challenger, also boast some hefty yellowtails although keeping the catch from the sharks can be a bit of a chore. Still if you can manage to keep a few, they will weigh up nicely.On a trip to and from the Banks, it is still worth dragging a line or two. The heavy influx of seaweed may mean that other flotsam has also come into the local area and it might well have brought some wahoo and dolphin with it. Locating a little knot of either can be rewarding and there is till the very off chance of hooking up with a marlin. It has happened before in October and it could come in any size. Anglers almost always have visions of billfish somewhere in their winds and a late one is better than none at all.Have you ever wondered what the fuss was behind the IGFA Great Marlin Race (IGMR)? It sure gets enough publicity in the official IGFA publications and in most of the other media associated with sport fishing. If you really aren’t sure, then relax, you are not alone in trying to figure this one out.As is so often the case, the whole thing is a bit of a misnomer. While the “great” might be applicable to the scale of the enterprise or to the amount of information it may provide, it certainly has nothing; or at least, very little to do with “great, big marlin”.It is all related to a new spin that is being put on tagging. Now that the satellite tags have become available for billfish, the emphasis is on utilising these expensive electronic devices to gather as much information as possible about the roamings of the blue marlin.Each tournament that participates in the IGMR deploys a set of tags that compete against each other. Most races have a recognised beginning and end but, in this case, the start is known but the end is a bit of a mystery dependent on where the tag pops up 120 days after deployment. Because the tags are so costly, they are generally sponsored by teams or individuals or other organisations and the tag on the marlin that travels the farthest wins the “race” for the provider of the tag.While marlin tagging has been going on for decades and literally thousands of fish have been tagged, the amount of reliable data that has been recorded is almost pitiful.The number of tag returns is quite small compared to the number released. At first this was put down to the fish dying, then sinking into the abyss and so the tag was lost.Then came the happy thought that there were so many marlin out there that the chances of recapturing a tagged fish were miniscule.It later emerged that some skippers refused to tag fish because the belief was that the longliners would use the information collected to wreak havoc on the marlin population; others provided disinformation to divert the attention of commercial fisheries and still others failed to send in the cards with the information. In the latter case, a tag return might never be connected to any initial details and so the result was almost worthless in terms of data collected.These new tags prove that the fish survives because the data collected includes the depths to which the fish has gone in addition to its geographic movement and there is additional information that can be gleaned from the downloaded data. Amazing what these computers and satellites can do in conjunction with some Tight lines!!!