Broadbill on the beach
Just how incredibly bizarre, yet pulsatingly
exciting, can a quiet fish from a south coast Wellington beach on a hot sunny
afternoon become?
For one Wellington Surfcasting member the chain of
events that unfolded can best by the angler himself.
“I had just caught a small spotty shark when I
noticed a commotion near the water’s edge about 300 metres down the beach.
Amongst the huge swirl of water the colour blue was prominent and my first
thoughts were of a large blue shark stirring up the bait fish.
I continued fishing and about five minutes later
was completely gob smacked when a very fast and large bow wave came racing
straight towards me, veering off just yards from the shore and giving me a near
perfect view of a good sized billfish displaying those incredible “lit-up” blue
colours of a fish hunting food. By this stage I was in a fit of excitement that
only went up another gear when the billfish repeated his mad shoreward dash a
few minutes later.
And this for me was the sad part, for the
split-second timing of the billfish’s run, coinciding with a good dumping wave,
deposited the fish right on the beach and I could only watch in awe as the fish
struggled to get back over the lip into the relatively shallow water.
It was a forlorn hope even though I thought I could
help try and turn its head into the sea, but it just was impossible to move the
fish, which I now recognised as a broadbill and guessed its weight at around
180 kilos. I could also see that the fish had snapped one of its pectoral fins
as it crashed onto the beach and this helped me make my mind up to humanely put
the fish out of its dying struggles.
As fate would have it a mate of mine came along the
beach in his quad so we were able to tail rope the fish and drag it above the
high tide mark. And why it doesn’t seem right for a fish of this calibre and
size to end its life in this unfortunate way, I can tell you that we were able
to take all the meat from the fish which filled two 100 litre chilly
bins and feed many families.”
As an aside, I am told the swordfish’s stomach
contained numerous hoki, a species occurring in the adjacent deep canyons and
reefs of Cook Strait. The conjecture is, why would this particular fish stray
so far from its usual haunts and what food was it hunting so close to the
shore?
18 March 2019
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