Fished the harbour yesterday (saturday) and the fishing is starting to get good, fish came on the bite about 1.5 hours before high and were taking baits as soon as we dropped them down. We came home with a mixed bag of a couple of big kahawai, 4 snapper between 35 to 37cm and 4 big gurnard with many other smaller but legal fish caught and let free to swim again. Had an epic battle with a kingy which looked to be around the 20kg mark which was lost right beside the boat
It took a kahawai livebait and did a loop around the anchor rope and berly pot and kept on swimming, with the bail arm open i let the fish run and in a mad panic tried to untangle the line from the anchor rope meanwhile the fish was stripping line off the reel, i cut the berly pot line and dropped the end with the berly on so that sunk to the bottom, damn... then I managed to loop the rod around the anchor rope and success! it was free.
Carried on winding the fish in, which was now probably 150m away, with minimal resistence... maybe i'd just caught a small shark? kept winding and as it got close to the boat the fish exploaded and screamed back under the boat and.... around the anchor rope once more... back into free spool... untangle the lines and back in business, this time we pulled the anchor up and motored after the fish trying to get back the line I lost while in free spool.
As we got line back on the fish I looked out and about 50m away from the boat I could see a dark green shadow right up near the surface... it's a kingy!!!
Seeing the fish filled us with excitement and once again it came towards the boat with minimal resistance, cruising along the surface. Got it along side, grabbed the leader and within 3 seconds the fish exploaded again and dived, breaking the 80lb trace and tightening up the leader which was looped around my hand so much that it cut grooves into 3 of my fingers... ouch...
This would of been the 2nd kingfish I've caught and looked to be double the size of my first one (10.5kg) I was blown away with how explosive this fish was and how much brute force it was throwing at me. I can see how people get addicted to catching them, they're such a strong fish and now I just wanna catch more.
Well thats my story, I will get some pics of the fish from a video on my phone when I work out the issue with the videos not playing on my laptop, but they will come!
How was everybody else's weekend? The weather has been awesome
Edit : Here are some pics...
The first burst of power when it screamed off under the boat...
(Daiwa monster mesh max popper rod)
...And when we got it up next to the boat
And right before he busted off...