James Clain

Great report and write up. Nice photos!

Awesome work mate what a cracker of a fish. That's awesome!

Great report Pickles, really interesting read!

3 way shogun crane swivels rated to 100kgs have worked fine for me

Unfortunately for Ladbased Fishos lined up along the banks. There might be a big brawl if someone catches it. Personally just 1, 1 million dollar fish is insane. Why not 100 with 10 thousand. I just have a horrible feeling there will be an altercation if the big one gets caught.

Great work @Pickles lots of nice fish there.

Nice fishing Dave and BN. Well written report. Nice to hear of some Taylor's arm action. Is it as good as the main Nambucca river? I can almost hear you saying thats a jack with that photo of the awesome cod!

I see you caught that upstream kingfish ahaha. I can tell that a really good jack session is coming! Top photos.

After a little bit of research about the freshwater capabilities of Trevs especially Giant Trevally I came across something incredibly interesting. Giant Trevally are primarily a saltwater fish. However the young ones growing up in the estuaries are very highly adapted at tolerating freshwater. Lake Taal in the phillipines is home to the only true freshwater GT. Lake Taal prior to around 1754 was a saltwater lagoon connected to the ocean but after a serious eruption from the Taal volcano in 1754 the lake was sealed and gradually became fresh. The saltwater fish, the GT and some other saltwater sardines survived and adapted to become a full freshwater species. The GT in the lagoon are known as Maliputo and are well known as a great table fish and are subsequently have been overfished in the region. Nowadays the lagoon is connected to the sea, while the Lake still remains fresh the GT have 'swapped directions' and now currently swim to the salt estuarine waters to breed and then return upstream. Similar to Australian Bass. This is not an abnormality, although I do believe the Maliputo GT are now a specific subspecies as their breeding pattern has changed and maximum size decreased it is still well documented and studied that juvenile GT can survive in saltwater as dilute as >0.05% and there is actually a market for GT sold as freshwater tank fish along with bigeye Trevally which to my knowledge are even better at withstanding the fresh. The sea is on average 3% salt and maximum salt percentage in water is 40%. I believe there is a landlocked lake on the Gold Coast with GT and Bigeye in it?? I really love GT they are such a mysterious fish. As though as nails with fighting power comparable to no other fish. Check out this video of GT in a koi carp pond - Here are some sources I used to prove that this is actually a legit thing. "Maliputo, the full freshwater Giant Trevally" https://repository.seafdec.org.ph/handle/10862/2792 https://themissionflymag.com/2018/10/08/the-maliputo/ https://www.oceanhunter.co.nz/NEED+TO+KNOW/Species+Identification/giant+trevally.html https://animalscene.ph/2017/11/27/secrets-of-the-maliputo-talakitok/ https://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/fish/Perciformes/Carangidae/Caranx-ignobilis

Great report Dave. amazing fish and amazing photos!

Probably not going to want to launch or retreive at low tide

Definitely coming up in summer now!

After my great session with @dirvin21 A landbased GT was now the target. I fished for a few days at Brunswick heads for only one flathead. On the last night at Brunswick Marina there were trevs bustin up hard. Unfortunately out in the middle and out of reach of most casts. A 3 inch popper got hit hard once when a bust-up erupted around it. Although there were no Gt caught that night however I did get to experience a beautiful GT topwater take out in the middle, a massive head wake and insane acceleration followed by a huge explosion. I estimate this fish was in the 70 to 80cm range. The quest for my first landbased GT was still on. I thought it was all over as we were driving back from Mullumbimby to Sydney in one day but a near halfway stop at Macksvillle on the Nambucca river for 30 minutes kept my hopes up. Upon arrival there was considerable amounts of bait holding on the rock wall (butterbream, australian herring, big-eye trevally, whitebait and some larger silver fish which I assume to be small tailor or GT) I had my hopes up for a jack but the target was to get a landbased GT. After approximately 10 minutes of fishing and a short conversation with the passing @dirvin21 on his boat i managed a nice skip cast underneath the old highway bridge and got hammered as soon as the atomic hards 70mm diving lure got below a large bait ball of bigeye Trevally and herring. A 30 cm A GT. The fast and powerful take was unmistakable, followed by a long strip of drag peeled of the reel could only mean one thing! Not a large one like the great fish caught on the earlier trip but still amazing how it pulled at least 3 - 4 metres of locked 'jack drag' Am I right in saying the warmer water produces a better fight from a fish as this one was caught in strong sunlight alongside a rock bar and bridge pylon? - Photo below is the good one caught earlier in the week with dirvin. Next target - Sydney GT and a NSW Mangrove Jack!!!!

Kings are starting to be on! I have firsthand experience and from friends experiences in the past 2 weeks!

Thanks @dirvin21for the great day out getting onto some awesome fish and loosing a few as well . Here is the video of this great day out showcasing all the highlights!

To have a setup that small and also one that is light and packs a punch you are going to need to go a bit more than 200 per peice. The Setup that I have which is similar to what you ask is a Daiwa TD sol iii 5000 compact on a custom 17lb rod. That setup is very very light which makes it easily fishable all day but the td sol is $389 and the rod was given to me but I was told was around 300 - 500 new. And I still get smoked on this setup. Everything is a compromise. Leader strength vs visibility. Weight vs strength. Price vs quality. Depending on what route you want to go I can get back to you with a better option. You can go Sw series of reels like the Shimano Spheros. Or compact reels like my Daiwa td sol iii. With my setup I personally go for lightness and finesse while using a lighter 15 -20lb leader so I can get more bites. The price is a bit higher so I still have a reasonable amount of quality.

That's a mad trev dude. Really nice fish and good job landing that!

And a human

Nice reports thats heaps of bass!

Thanks @Rebel

200lb line class rod - there are no conversions on the internet for anything over pe12 So I made a linear model to find out what it actually is.

Didn't catch much but if you have a boat this will be helpful for you. There are lots of salmon and kings busting up in between Clarke island and goat island in the main harbour. They were taking downrigged live yakkas all we could do was watch as the boats cleaned up. Bustups came close but just out of casting range of landbased. However my mate who was fishing with us decided to travel on to milsons point rock ledge while the rest of out friend group stopped at Kiribilli to try at some blackfish. First drop for the blackfish and I get a very intense phone call to say that there are about 20 very large kings at Milsons point. They didn't take a slimswim but smashed a 200mm halco popper straightaway, the whole school apparently turned and competed for the lure (we like to fish with big poppers because on the odd occasion you do get a fish the take is crazy and the fish will be large). I hope the information is beneficial to some raiders keen to get out there and smash the fish while us landbased fishos watch you. Here is my mates hookup, unfortunately the hooks pulled but it was certainly a very large fish. (Btw that rod is pe16)

That looks really good @JonD

Great report and great photos!

It will certainly feed a few adult kings! Not saying this is a bad thing.