I brought Ambition back from Port Stephens last Monday. I fished all the way down starting just North of the 'Car Park ' trolling skip baits. The plan was originally to come back on Sunday but due to the weather on Saturday my charter was pushed back to Sunday. Consequently we made the trip back from Port Stephens on Monday. Surprisingly the weather was pretty good as we left the Port even though the week-end's weather pad been pretty ordinary. The plan was to run out North of the 'Car Park', find some bait and troll skippies for an hour or so then put out the lures and work our way back home to Sydney. All went to plan, we found some bait and slowed down to put out the skippies, Adam had just put out one . Then as he was setting the second one it was pulled out of his hand and a good sized Black tore off at a million miles an hour, so to speak. This fish gave a good account of itself giving us a good run for our money however the 24 kg. inevitably took its toll and the Black was soon released. Excitement all round as it was the angler's first marlin. So, with one fish under our belt, with the baits deployed we started again. It took a little longer to find the second fish and a bit more difficult to finally hook it. This Black came in on one of the skipped baits , hit it and dropped back without getting hooked. We then put out a live bait which it again picked up and again no hook up. Then while we were waiting and hoping for it to take the live bait again the other skipped bait was taken while it was sinking and this time the Black was hooked. It was a strange fight in that the fish , quite a large Black that we called at least 120kg., never took a run and didn't even go deep as you'd expect from a Black , So after a very short fight we dully released the Marlin . Continuing our trip down we had changed over to lures. Oddly just past the Newcastle canyons the water started going green and cooling. I went closer looking for better water, no go. I went out to 500 fathoms , no change. Conditions didn't change for the rest of the run down. We did however get a strike from a good sized Striped Marlin on the Southern edge of the Norah Canyons. On examining the leader it was obviously the fish had been bill wrapped. The water was only 21.5 C , green and apparently lifeless. Conditions don't seem to be getting any better off Sydney as we approach what I've always considered the best time of year for our offshore fishing. But ever being the optimist , it will get better.Nothing stays the same for long in the ocean. Tight lines, Ivan