Please select your home edition
Edition
North Sails Loft 57 Podcast

Confidence in catching the biggest fish that swims

by Liza Dukino 27 Nov 2019 01:56 PST
Catching the biggest fish © Raymarine

Captain Tim Dean has been running Calypso Fishing Adventures in the productive waters between Port Stephens and Cairns, Australia for the past 25 years.

"My clients come from all around the world to fish here in Australia, predominantly on the Great Barrier Reef chasing giant black marlin," he says.

Dean's boat, Calypso, is a 47-foot O'Brien, fully fitted out with Raymarine and FLIR electronics, including four Axiom Pro and Axiom XL multifunction displays, CHIRP sonar, Evolution autopilot, open array radar, and FLIR M-Series thermal cameras. Why FLIR and Raymarine? Because, according to Captain Tim, no other manufacturer delivers better technology for increasing situational awareness and heightened fishing intelligence.

"The technologies FLIR and Raymarine are coming out with are second to none," says Dean. "Information breeds confidence, and that's what it takes to catch the biggest fish that swims."

As Above...

Dean relies on FLIR sensing technologies like Open Array radar with Bird Mode, ClearCruise AR and thermal imaging to make sense of the complex topside environment around Calypso. All the information coming in is intuitively and clearly displayed in any manner as Dean chooses on one or more of his four Axiom Pro and Axiom XL multifunction displays, powered by the smart LightHouse 3 operating system. He can even add a drone to his information-gathering arsenal, and control operation and view its camera directly on his MFD using Axiom UAV.

"With the new HD radar I'm running, the open array, I can mark flocks of birds up to six miles out," Dean says. "You get on those birds and you'll usually find a whale shark or an aggregation of tuna, hence the marlin."

Dean gets Calypso where it needs to be quickly and efficiently with Raymarine Evolution autopilot. "I can plot a route from here to Cairns with ease," he says. "I just grab a cursor and hold it down and within a couple minutes I've got a course plotted for a thousand nautical miles. I put my data card on the navigation screen, which will tell me distance to waypoint... how long I've got to go. It'll replay downstairs so the crew can see where I'm at and what time we're going to get in. They can tune up their works so when we hit the docks we're just throwing ropes on and we're good to go."

Calypso is also outfitted with FLIR thermal cameras, which provide detailed views of the vessel's surroundings, day or night, and display those views on Axiom. "With the FLIR camera we have, coming into a marina at night, you'll miss nothing. It's the best thing I've ever put on my boat," Dean says.

... So Below

"It's really hard to hide as a fish around Raymarine equipment," Says Dean, who runs the Raymarine CP570 Professional CHIRP Sonar Module, bringing best-in-class target separation and high-resolution sonar imagery to his Axiom MFDs.

"CHIRP equipment is a game changer, especially for that inshore shallow water... you're marking individual fish; the stuff's that good," he says. "You can count how many fish are swimming around a reef. I'm running four screens up there now, so I've got it pretty well covered. I'll run low-frequency (50 kHz) CHIRP, then I'll run my chartplotter on my big screen next to my 200 kHz (high-frequency CHIRP). At the touch of the screen I can move them anywhere I want. There's nothing that can swim under, around, beside, behind this boat we won't know it's there. When a fish rolls past the sounder, I just touch the screen and it pops up on my GPS where that fish is. Even if I miss that fish, I can scroll back through the data and through the screen on the sounder... I could have run over a fish five minutes ago and I can touch his position and it will tell me where he was."

Captain Tim is also an enthusiastic user of Raymarine RealVision 3D technology. "The RealVision 3D is something I never thought I'd see," he says. "I had heard about this sort of technology, and we've been running it pretty solid on the inshore reefs and it just self-maps each time you run over it. It's building more data into the system and once you get your head around how it's working, it's the ultimate game changer."

Confidence

"People often ask, what's the one thing you need to catch the biggest fish that swims?" says Dean. "The answer should be confidence. With Raymarine, I'm confident every time I leave the dock."

For more information on the Raymarine electronics, visit raymarine.com.

For more information on the FLIR marine products, visit flir.com/applications/marine.

Learn more about Captain Tim and the Calypso Fishing Adventures team at marlinfishingaustralia.com, or follow his adventures on social media at @calypsofishing

Related Articles

All smiles among first finishers of the AEGEAN 600
The fastest teams crossed the finish line today at Cape Sounion As the fastest teams crossed the finish line today at Cape Sounion and made their way to the harbour at Olympic Marine, there were exhausted smiles all around. Posted on 10 Jul
British Classic Week day 4
It was a classic Solent day in Cowes for the OneSails inshore race It was a classic Solent day in Cowes for day 4 of British Classic Week with hot temperatures, sunshine and no breeze in the morning before the sea breeze kicked in from the west and it was time to go racing. Posted on 10 Jul
iQFOiL Worlds a Aarhus day 5
Finalists locked in for new Medal Series format With the sea breeze stubbornly refusing to make an appearance, Day 5 of the iQFOiL World Championship turned into a long waiting game both ashore and on the water. Posted on 10 Jul
Jazz Turner Video Interview
How she Faced Everything And Rose during Project FEAR I travelled to Brighton Marina to catch up with Jazz, talking about her own sailing, the challenges she faced during the circumnavigation, how the money raised will be used, and a glimpse of her future projects! Posted on 10 Jul
CYCS SailMV's Vineyard Cup Preview
The regatta will feature stunning classics racing around the beautiful island of Martha's Vineyard. The second Classic Yacht Challenge Series (CYCS) event of the 2025 season gets under way on Friday, July 11 with the Vineyard Cup organized by Sail Martha's Vineyard (SailMV). Posted on 10 Jul
America's Cup: Luna Rossa to sail for Naples club.
Italian Challenger Luna Rossa will contest the next America's Cup as the team of a Naples club. Italian Challenger Luna Rossa will contest its seventh America's Cup as the team of the Circolo del Remo e della Vela Italia of Naples, as club that is new to the America's Cup. Posted on 10 Jul
International Moth Worlds at Lake Garda Day 3
Big breeze in the morning, calm in the afternoon The third day of racing at the 2025 Moth World Championship kicked off early, with the first warning signal for the Blue fleet scheduled for 8:30 AM. Due to strong northerly winds, however, the fleet's departure was postponed to 9:00. Posted on 10 Jul
Introducing the Micro Gateway from Cyclops Marine
Live load data, simplified - smaller, smarter, even more connected At Cyclops Marine, we're driven by the pursuit of precision, performance, and progress. As the marine industry continues to embrace digital transformation, our technology is evolving rapidly. Posted on 10 Jul
Everything to know about The Ocean Race Europe
One month to go to the race start in Kiel One month out from the start of the 2025 edition of The Ocean Race Europe seven mixed-gender crews made up of sailors from across 13 nations are in the throes of their final preparations for the Race start in Kiel, Germany. Posted on 10 Jul
The countdown to the Race to Mackinac
2025 is a landmark year for the Chicago Yacht Club 2025 is a landmark year for the Chicago Yacht Club and the Race to Mackinac presented by Wintrust Financial Corporation. Posted on 10 Jul
Zhik 2024 DecemberSelden 2020 - FOOTERBarton Marine Pipe Glands