Hey guys,
Long time reader, first time poster. Just thought I'd let some people who actually care know about the monster lizard I caught last Wednesday out at South West Arms (my girlfriend is sick of hearing about it!)
I was out on the sand flats out at Gray's Point with a mate, using some live bait we caught at Oatley Park, 8lb line and 12lb trace. We hadn't had much luck all afternoon but at about 4pm I got a slight tug on my line. I picked it up, it felt like a huge snag but then all of a sudden the flatty on the end went for a huge run.
After about 40 minutes of running around the sand flats I managed the pull it all the way to the edge of the shoreline... we both almost ran in the other direction when we saw the thing as it was the biggest flathead we had seen in any photos or websites... it looked like a crocodile!!
Unfortunately we had forgotten the net and we couldn't find our flathead gloves and before we could pull it out of the water it got into a huge headshake and snapped off the line :-( In all the confusion, however, we managed to get a couple of very average photos and a quick measure against a rod while it was sitting in the sandflats (which actually turned out to be around the 1.35m mark, but let's be modest and call it 1.2 as it was a rough measure!) . The photos unfortunately don't show the full size of the fish... its head was the size of dinner plate! haha.
Anyway, fish of a lifetime and great signs the Port Hacking is in an excellent condition.. it was probably better we didn't land it as these fish are too valuable to risk taking out of the water!
Cheers,
Nick