SAILFISH 2800 PLATINUM SPORTS WITH TWIN YAMAHA 425HP

The Captain heads out from Botany Bay, NSW on a quest for yellowfin, while skipper Marty Secheny is more than happy to give us the lowdown on his much-modified Sailfish 2800 Platinum.

Every once in a while, The Captain comes across a bloke who is so into fishing he’ll do whatever it takes to create the perfect fish-catching chariot. Ex-publican Marty Secheny is a catamaran fan who has been fish hunting out of Botany Bay in NSW ever since his dad first whipped him out of his pushchair for his first salty taste of life afloat.

“My dad taught me to fish when I was very young,” Marty recalls. “We had a little 5.2m Pacific Sportfish at the time.” Fast-forward a few years, and Marty’s running the Bidwill Hotel in Western Sydney, is at the helm of a Sailfish 2400 Gamefisher and has fallen in love with catamarans.

“I ran that boat for a good five or six years, but wanted to upgrade to something larger. We were venturing further and further offshore to the point it was getting ridiculous. I was always looking to go further and longer and chase bigger and bigger fish.” These days, Marty runs a Sailfish 2800 Platinum and couldn’t be more stoked. Mind you, he has made, er, a few modifications.

Once he’d decided on the Sailfish model he wanted, Marty took his wish list to Ash and Gav at catamaran specialists Webbe Marine at Kirrawee in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

“The guys at Webbe Marine really looked after me,” he says. “I had a lot of things I wanted customised and done differently to the standard boat. But they couldn’t have been more accommodating.

SAILFISH CATAMARANS

Everything I wanted, they did and it’s turned out just the way I wanted it.” Marty sat down with Ash and put pen to paper detailing the inclusions and changes he wanted to make to the standard boat — the rear doors, the windows, the showers, the underfloor freshwater tanks, all had to go.

“I always intended to use it as a day boat, so I didn’t want it enclosed and I wanted maximum fuel capacity.”

There was a brief pause in proceedings while the team wait for the new Honda 225s to land on Australian shores — Marty had decided they were the only outboard engines for his dream machine.

“The moment they were released, the boys went to work in the factory. I flew up there several times to meet with builder Darren, Ian and the crew, and at every step of the build we were able to sit down and see how it was going, further customise it, or change things along the way. We were a big part of the build.”

CHA, CHA, CHA, CHANGES

Top of Marty’s hit list was widening the boat to give it a 2.8m beam. “That extra 300mm goes into the sponsons, not the gap between them, which gives you a better ride,” he says. “Then we offset the superstructure so there’s no access up the port side, which gives us an extra 150–200mm cabin space.” Of course, it also meant the only walk-round access to the bow is via the starboard side. But why stop there? Marty also wanted to more room to hang out the window, so he reversed the targa top.

“The back of the targa top usually faces the bow, but we’ve flipped it so we can get a nice, breezy, double-length window opening,” he says. “I really like to hang out the window when we’re fighting fish, without having to juggle with the glass.” Marty decided the slimy tubes should be built in instead of just tacked on the back of the boat, and also opted to put rod holders up the side of the targa. “It’s so when we get onto a fish we can load everything off to that side and keep the fight side clear,” he says.

Darren and his team ripped out all the extra freshwater options to deliver a maximum fuel capacity of 600L — 300L each side — and threw in some Shockwave suspension seats. Marty wanted heaps of cold storage and what Marty wants… “Apart from the little food fridge, the drinks eskie is fully refrigerated with its own compressor, and beneath that on the port side of the boat we’ve got a 460L underfloor freezer, which we can pack ice bags into and it’s good for a couple of days,” he says. “We can slide a fish in there, fill it up with salt water to get a good slurry going and it keeps until we get home.”

Considering Marty pretty much moved into the Sailfish factory while the boat was being chopped and channelled, he reckons Darren and his team were pretty chilled. “I remember him saying he loves the challenge of customising because it’s something different,” Marty recalls. “They were into it with all guns blazing and even came up with some stuff I hadn’t thought of — particularly in terms of storage. We decided that anywhere we could fit a compartment bigger than a tissue box, we’d put a hatch on it.”

POWER-HUNGRY

In the electronics department, Marty decided to go with a comprehensive Furuno package and Mark “Chop” Reid from Furuno was involved from the outset in the planning of the build. But when they finally got the boat in the water, they discovered a bit of a problem — they were running out of juice. “We’ve got three transducers under the boat — a 1kW, 2kW and a triple beam on custom fairing blocks — so it was sucking a heap of power. We were drawing more power on these 15-hour trolling days than we were putting back into the system!” Marty laughs.

The Webbe Marine/Furuno brains trust came up with a solution — a standalone lithium battery bank in the front of the cabin — and Marty says it hasn’t missed a beat since.

“It’s powering the satellite compass the 72nm radar on the roof, all the PCs up the front, the charging equipment, and the three Hatteland touchscreens — two up the front and one at the rear.” That rear touchscreen is another Marty modification. “We built a station in the cockpit of the boat so we can have a third Hatteland. So when guys are jigging or catching bait at the back, or even if we’re just trolling along, people can see what’s happening on the sounder. Or even just watch what we’re up to, the direction we’re travelling or what the temperature is.”

CAPTAIN’S DAY OUT

So pleased is Marty with his Sailfish 2800, he’s been nagging The Captain to come for a spin for a while now. Never one to turn down a free trip to the shelf, the crew manages to get to the Botany Bay boat ramp before dawn. Marty is a big believer in getting out on the water well before the sun comes up. “It’s always an early start and we’ll leave the ramp at 4am–4.30am — I like to get well out and off the shelf at first light to get that nice early morning bite,” he says. “We’ll use the radar and take our time getting out until first light, then punch it a bit harder to get out to the grounds.” Marty had checked out RipCharts and knew there’d been a good yellowfin bite down off Jervis Bay the day before — so we head in that general direction.

“That hot water that bypasses Sydney and flows into JB has been branching down predominantly towards Bermagui where they’ve had a really great run of yellowfin,” he says with a bloodthirsty grin. “Today, they’re a bit closer because that same body of water is pushing up towards us and is now about 70km south of Botany Bay.” Marty had already done the SST download on the Furuno system and after a couple of hours on the charge, we hit the good water — nice and blue out wide at about 1700 fathoms — and Marty broke out the Tiagras. Also on board for the day is Marty’s 16-yearold son, Nathan. He’s rocking some wild hair and a rad redneck denim overall ensemble. “He’s a bit of a worry that young lad,” Marty says. “He and my other son, Aaron, love coming out on the boat and they’re starting to take a bit of an interest. The more they get into it, the more I enjoy going out with them.

YELLOWFIN SPREAD

Marty has all the good gear. Today, he opts for the Tiagra 80s rather than the 50s he’d normally run on a tuna hunt. “Some of the fish caught down south yesterday were pretty big, “ he says. “We knew we were heading out super-wide today so we thought we’d throw the 80s on board.” On the lure front, Marty reckons he’ll get lucky with a Profidgie spread, despite having come unstuck a few weeks back when they had a blue marlin throw the hooks. “That wasn’t ideal,” he says. “The lures definitely aren’t preferable when it comes to marlin. But they’re great lures for tuna and we’ve had some luck on them.”

The boys are also running a teaser daisy chain set-up. “I don’t mind throwing a daisy chain of birds out the back with a lure at the end of it,” Marty says. “That’s one of Melton Tackle’s rigs and we’ve had striped marlin, blue marlin, bluefin and yellowfin on it. I like to run out in the short corner, not all year round, but it gets a pretty fair run.”

TACKLE TALK

“I’ve always used Shimano. I know there are plenty of good brands out there, some great tackle on the market, but my personal preference is Shimano, it’s never let me down. We’ve got 50s, 80s, Saragosas, all our rods — in fact, pretty much all our gear — is Shimano. If you look after it well, you can’t go wrong. I get it serviced every 12 months. If I could only fish with one lure ever again, all year round, it would be a Tantrum XL Bandit on the rigger. I don’t do any bottom bashing off Sydney, I don’t deep drop, we pretty much find ourselves going from yellowfin to bluefin to marlin — and a bit of shark in between if we’re waiting for the water to turn over. But I’ll still go out in the tinnie and have a flattie bash to catch a nice feed for lunch for the family.”

THE REASON WHY

But despite all this clear blue water and heavy weaponry, the fish aren’t cooperating at all. “The temperature was right and we saw good yellowfin bursting through the water this morning, but we didn’t get a touch, Marty says with a shrug. “That’s fishing — we didn’t get the bite, but we’ll keep chasing it.” Heading back to Botany Bay, Marty tells us fishing is his happy place. “It’s my downtime — you get out those heads, you lose phone reception and it’s just great. It doesn’t matter whether I get onto them or not, I love getting out on the water, spending time with family and friends, having a beer and a laugh — and when it happens, it’s an exciting bonus.” Even though it’s his happy place, Marty admits every fishing trip is not necessarily a pleasure cruise.

“We put in a pretty long day, usually sunrise to sunset, and sometimes a bit beyond that to try to get the two tide changes in. We go as far and hard as we can to find the fish.” So, The Captain asks, speaking as an ex-publican, what’s harder: wrestling an angry giant drunk out of a pub or landing a 90kg yellowfin? “They both certainly test your patience,” Marty laughs. “But I gave up wrestling drunks out of pubs a long time ago. I let other people do that for me now.”

MARTY’S TOP 3 TIPS FOR YELLOWFIN

01 Find the good blue, clear, 21-degree water. If you have to go further to get out of the murk or the green or the cloudy water, travel as far as you need to.

02 Patience — they’re pretty fickle, not like the bluefin.

03 These big yellowfin can teach us some lessons. There are plenty of times we’ve had one up beside the boat and lost it at the last minute. But there are good ones as well. A good mate of mine and I caught a 92kg one off Sydney — that’s probably my most memorable.