THE BIG ONE: Ryan Pauline at the 28.5kg, 1.4m kingfish speared off a Far South Coast headland on the weekend.
TWO local Tathra lads on the weekend speared some of the biggest kingfish seen on the Far South Coast for some time.
Ryan and Stuart Pauline took advantage of westerly conditions on the Saturday and went spearfishing off their favourite headland “somewhere”.
They ran into a school of massive kingfish, spearing three fish, the biggest of which went 28.5kg and 1.4 metres.
Ryan said it dragged him around for around 15 minutes before he was able to bring it under control.
The lads have speared big kingfish as recently as this summer but these did not break the 20kg mark, but even so one towed one of them from the Tathra Wharf out to the point.
Mum said it was particularly rewarding to see her two lads out fishing together.
Fish of these size are not often seen on the Far South Coast of NSW, but then again there is probably little chance of bringing in a fish of this size on a standard rod and reel.
Those of us who fish regular kingfish haunts such as Montague Island and Mowarry Point occasionally have our baits taken by something massive and we often think shark or some other serious pelagic – but could it be one of these monsters…
The only kingfish of larger size that I have personally seen are the huge fish that come into Coffin Bay on the Eyre Peninsula to spawn, as well as loitering around the Port August power station.
I had a mate who managed to land a Coffin Bay “horse” on a live Tommy Ruff bait using whipper snipper line tied to the front of his small unpowered skiff – trust me his huge fish, which I don’t recall the dimensions of, towed him around as well…
Who knows the movement of these massive fish, but fish tagged at Mowarry at Eden have swum to New Zealand and vice versa.
Who knows, these massive Eden kingies could have been heading down to Coffin Bay, and interestingly the biggest was a female with a very large load of roe or eggs inside her.
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