My buddy James Plunkett and I made a late start on Saturday for our mission to catch some kingfish and launched our kayaks at 8.30am.
At first, I thought we’d probably just anchor and berley down, but then I saw swarms of birds about two kilometres away.
I rowed towards them on my Stealth 525 cutting through the water and James, who I call my lucky charm as we hit the jackpot catching kingies last time he came, followed behind.
I’d never seen so many birds on the water in my life.
There must have been over 1000, floating on the water, constantly flying past and diving and we were right in the middle of it.
I only had one thing on my mind though and that was kingfish.
Got my trusty lure out and first cast had a kahawai on. I hooked it up and set it up as live bait. Another flick of the lure and kahawai number two was on. Live bait again and now for them to do their job.
The big boil-up started to fade and broke up into a lot of smaller ones and still no kingfish in the hatch.
I started paddling back towards James who was over 100 metres away, landing snapper and kahawai for afternoon fish and chips.
The birds started to disappear and the boil-ups too. I got this ill feeling I’d missed the window of opportunity, when suddenly there was a short jerk on my Shimano TLD 15 live bait rod and reel combo. My initial thought was a shark of some sorts testing the kahawai or maybe a biggish snapper. Another jerk or two and then my reel started screaming.
“Shit James, I’m on, I’m on!” I shouted.
On our previous outing I lost my live bait rig and went back home with some more improvements with help from YouTube. So, I let the fish run on free spool and slowly started to increase the drag. As soon as I had the drag setup, I knew this was something big. Still unsure what it was.
The fight wasn’t too long as my live bait gear is a bit heavier than my spinning gear and made it easy work to bring the fish in. Maybe the long run also tired it out, or perhaps because this fish was so fat made it lazier than the previous ones I caught.
The kingi went straight into the hatch before I even gave it the spike through the head as I was scared, I might lose it while trying to administer the ‘kill-shot.’ I take no net nor gaff on my outings as it makes things fair, I believe. This all happened around 11.00am.
“That was a good two and a half hours spent,” said James after the kingi was safely in the hatch.
The kingi measured 103 centimetres and weighed a whopping 15 kilogrames, my heaviest to date.
Things I noted from this trip:
1) You don’t always need to launch at the crack of dawn.
2) Always chase the birds, they’re your eyes in the sky.
3) No need to ponder around when your prize fish is already in the hatch.
4) Always go fishing with James!
