The Wildlife Anglers FISH OF A LIFETIME

I had seen videos of people nearly having their catch taken by big gropers before and heard stories about mates diving under the jetty and making a run for it when they had come face to face with one. But I never thought I would come across one in such a small tidal pool.

We were cooking breakfast waiting for the tide to come in so we could make the trip back to town. As always, I had a big livey out just incase I would finally get the chance at a metre Barramundi. I heard line start screaming from the 6000 Thunnus and thought that chance had finally come. I saw a big swirl on the surface and a big yellow paddle tail which was more evidence that I was on a big barra. But there was no slowing this thing down at all. The drag was maxxed out, I was holding the spool just enough so the line and my 8kg rod didn’t explode, and the fish just wouldn’t slow down.

As I was slowly getting dragged toward the croccy water I was imagining this fish must be around 130 and was too big to jump. Devastation hit when the fish snagged up but snapped itself free of the branch shortly after and started running the other direction for a far bigger snag. With the combo really struggling I managed to put just enough hurt on the fish and slow it down and after 10 minutes it gave up, but even then it was still like dragging in a barrel of water! As it hit the shore, there was a mixture of disappointment that it wasn’t a record Barramundi, but massive froth over the enormous, although still only juvenile, Queensland groper. The fish was too big to pick up so with my mate Dan’s assistance we rolled it onto my knees for a quick photo. At this point the fish coughed up an entire 180 carapace Mudcrab. We got some photos as fast as we could so we could get the king of this creek system back healthily to its snag to terrorize another unsuspecting fisherman!

MAKE SURE YOU GIVE THE WILDLIFE ANGLER SOME LOVE ON HIS SOCIALS!