So I never thought i would get excited by the spearing off the CBD area 15 minutes from home all this chasing fish and not landing anything bigger then 7kg in the last 8 months has been driving me a little bit insane. However yesterday during a rock hop with a few other guys from our local spearing club I managed to find myself the elusive winter king.
The story goes as follows So today I managed to land my first decent fish since moving to NSW this fish fought very hard and dirty. I was down diving on a red mowie and lined him up but decided not to shoot and relaxed my arm. The gun tip was now falling to the sea floor and I looked up just before I was to push up off the bottom to have my gaze met by a school of 10-15 kings. I quickly pulled my gun around to try and get one and by the time I had my gun in the right direction the last one was moving past. There was not too much time to line up but to know I would hit him mid body and pulled the trigger on my 1.1m Edge. The line then started screaming off my barracuda reel set up and before I knew it I was on the surface being towed around. I put the brakes on fairly hard as I did not want the fish to wrap up in the rocks and was slowly gaining line back. However every time I thought I was getting on top of him he would go for another run. I could then see the flopper was toggled but the flesh was tearing as I had been quite rough with him keeping him from the caves.
I then knew I needed to keep the pressure on so that the flopper did not drop and then have the fish get away. I also yelled out for someone to come over to come put in a back up shot just in case. After a bit more towing and slowly winning some line back pasta arrived to aid me and then had a shot from the surface as he was buggered. I thought yes finally this fight is over BUT his spear had just missed and gone under. The fish then got another wind and pulled some more line from me I slowly fought back up and had my hands on the mono by the time pasta had reloaded he then secured the fish with a second shot and then I had him in my hands and as I wrapped my hands around him I realized how fat he was. Not a very long fish but very fat which got me thinking about weights and the FOTY (Fish of the year club awards) but I was adamant it was only 13 until a set of scales proved different. I then ensured I bled the fish well and brained him and put him on my rig line. There were then lots of hoots and cheers and high 5's. I then just enjoyed the rest of the dive watching an taking in all the species the fish ended up going 3 grams shy of 20kg which means ill be back in there trying to find that one that is going to push me over the 20kg Sydney metro benchmark.