The club started in October 1982. A public meeting was held in Traralgon with guest speakers from the Victorian and South Gippsland Game Fishing Clubs and representatives from ANSA and AAA. From a crowd of around 60 people a group of 8 interested people formed a steering committee to start the process of forming a club.

This culminated in the Latrobe Valley Game Fishing Club holding its inaugural meeting in October 1982 at the Lecture Theatre of Catholic Regional College. Laurie Lewis was elected as the Inaugural President, Rob Martin as Vice President, Dennis Oakley as Secretary, Frank Desira as Treasurer and Graeme Davidson, Dave Hall, Jack Newton, Neville Parr, Craig Purcell and Roger Zwierlein to the Committee. Within 3 months there were 80 members and by the end of the first financial year the club had 92 members.

The first Club Newsletter was published in December 1982 with Roger Zwierlein, Craig Purcell and Rob Martin as co-editors. A competition was held to give the newsletter a name and Wendy Oakley came up with the winning title of “Gantry Gossip”.

Neville Parr caught the first and only marlin for the season with a 106kg Black Marlin on 24 kg tackle at Bermagui on January 4th, 1983. During our first season we tagged and released 7 striped tuna, 4 albacore, 3 southern bluefin tuna, 1 mackeral tuna, 1 dolphin fish and 1 yellowtail kingfish. Club captures comprised 1 yellowfin tuna, 13 albacore, 1 black marlin, 2 mako sharks, 1 hammerhead shark, 1 striped tuna and 32 southern bluefin tuna.

In our 2nd year the membership grew to 128 and the club made a conscious decision to heavily focus on tag and release. The successful tag and releases went from 17 in 1982-83 to 190 in the 1983-84 season. Since the clubs inception we have tagged and released 4355 fish. The 1986-87 season 376 fish were tagged and released, 477 in 1993-94, 356 in 1995-97 and 338 in 1996-97. The 1993-94 season saw the club win the GFAA award for the highest number of fish tagged and released.

The highlight of the 1984-85 season was the inaugural South East Coast Game Fish Classic held at Bermagui over the Queen’s Birthday weekend.