Tauranga's iconic marlin fishing competition, the Tauranga Game Fishing Club's One Base Tournament, is over for another year with the marlin ahead on points.

There were 95 boats about 300 fishers seeking marlin with three weighed, one tagged and released – and another tag and release that didn't get the tag card into the weigh station in time, says club manager Grant Holley.

Grant Holley.

The heaviest fish of the tournament was a 325kg blue marlin, on 24kg line, breaking the club record on the line weight. The previous was a 272.2kg.

The fish was boated in less than 20 minutes, but woke up when angler Keith Wolfsbauer of Te Awamutu brought it into the cockpit.

There followed a 20 minute struggle in the cockpit with the boat in deep water about 20km north of Mayor Island before the fish was subdued with a bat.

'You have got to stop and think when you have got a fish that size and you have got it to the boat in 20 minutes,” says Grant.

'You have got to be bloody careful. That's an awful lot of weight to have thrashing around in the cockpit.”

He's pretty happy with the way the tournament went, there were a few kingfish and snapper also taken to the weigh station, but no tuna.

Wednesday's storm resulted in the tournament losing a day, down to three whole fishing days.

Grant believes the forecast may also have put anglers off.

The $130 entries had to be in by Tuesday night.

'A lot of people held off till the last minute and the forecast was absolute crap but it did a complete turnaround on Wednesday night,” says Grant.

At 3am Thursday it was blowing a gale and pouring rain, but by 5.30am there wasn't a cloud in the sky and not a breath of wind.

'If you had looked at the weather you would think you might get one, maybe two days fishing.

A lot of guys would not pay $130 and get possibly one decent day out on the water.

'I've got no control over it so no point crying about it,” says Grant.

'They can blame me if the beer's warm but they can't blame me if it blows a gale.”

Another factor that reduced entries is the tighter economy says Grant.

A lot of skippers couldn't get crew.

'The number of skippers that said to me, ‘Love to be doing the one base but can't get the crew together this year',” says Grant.

'They either can't afford the dough or they can't afford to take the time off work.

'It's pretty bloody tough out there, and that discretionary spend they have got to think seriously about where it goes.

'That seems to be a trend not just for fishing tournaments, and not just for our club.

'What we do about it I don't know – I guess we just grin and bear it and hope it's better for next year.”

'There's not a lot we can do in retrospect, if we break even we will be bloody lucky, but there's nothing we can do about it.”