OPERATION SEA WEEZ

A journey that started on the Great Barrier Reef takes the long way around back to Australia

- CAPT. JOE BYRUM

"Wow, would you just look at that bottom structure! You reckon there's a couple of big marlin there?" Capt. Ross Finlayson asks rhetorically as he stares down at the Navionics chart on his phone. The area that's gotten his attention is one of the many banks and seamounts off the coast of the Azores, where he plans to take the 67-foot Ricky Scarborough Sea Weez the following year. This Portuguese chain of islands is known as a late-summer haunt for giant blue marlin and is almost a perfect antipode from where Finlayson has spent the majority of his career in the legendary waters of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. It wouldn't take many fingers to count the number of active captains who have caught more marlin over 800 pounds than Finlayson, but the allure of the upcoming adventure still transfixes him.

On this day, he's sitting in the salon of Sea Weez in Cape May, New Jersey, packing up as the Northeast portion of the season finishes up and he prepares to move the boat back to Scarborough for a quick dry dock. The canyon season has produced some blue and white marlin, but with overall slow fishing for the fleet, Finlayson's thoughts have now moved on to preparing for his next stops to Panama and the East Atlantic, with targets on the Canary Islands and the Azores.

The long-term plan is to take Sea Weez from the Atlantic's hotspots to the remote areas of the Pacific in search of giant marlin, with a goal of having Finlayson back on his GBR home turf within the next few years.

REEF ROOTS

Fishing on a brand-new private boat is quite a change of pace for Finlayson, who spent the previous 30-plus years as a charter captain on the Great Barrier Reef. He grew up in the Australian country town of Shepparton and began his fishing career as a crewman, ultimately overcoming his battle with seasickness and eventually working under Australian fishing legend Capt. Laurie Woodbridge on Sea Baby 4 in 1992.