I AM asked at times: “What is the biggest fish you have caught?”
I immediately think of a thumping cobia I caught off the rocks off Cabarita headland some years ago.
Kingfish, snapper and mulloway come to mind.
Then I think of the monster I caught off Fingal.
It was when I had Graham Duffy on board that I hooked my biggest jewfish, just on 75lb.
Talk about bedlam.
Stinkpot began to spin under the strength of the monster and plough towards a nearby shallow breaking reef.
We couldn’t find the torch.
Duffy’s language was rich and the thin prongs on the anchor had straightened and pulled.
The giant fish literally towed us into deep water.
After a ferocious contest the fish was finally ours. Laying belly-up beside the boat, in the moonlight, just under the surface, it seemed that the fish was bigger than the boat.
Many jewfish over 30kg were taken over the years and each one had a special story.
Generally speaking, jewfish were well behaved. Two or three solid runs and that was about it.
Once inside the tinny they were quite content to relax and grunt occasionally.
Not so sharks and kingfish, who simply refuse to toss in the towel – writhing, head-banging and tail-thrashing, all making life on board unbearable.
Facing such a dilemma, the plan was to jam the top half of the fish under the front seat and shove the tail half under the back seat. Good in theory, however in practice there was very little that could be done.
On board, the big fish would go crazy, flipping everything loose. Up in the air goes the tackle box, over goes the torch, was that my sunglasses that went over the side?
Interesting to note that I retired from targeting mulloway many years ago simply because they are too big for my small family and releasing the fish is out of the question as they rarely recover.
It took me ages to learn the habits of big mulloway that swim north from One Mile to Rocky Point then into Fingal Bay. I kept an accurate register of time, tide, month, moon phase, preferred bait and water temperature.
I calculated that I could catch mulloway out of Stinkpot 80 per cent of the time.
When I finally worked out how and where to catch mulloway regularly – I quit.
By John ‘Stinker’ CLARKE
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