Nz Kingfish Legal Limits

[Kirks]

Hey Boys

Just watching a NZ fishing show and there legal limits are quite big. For a Kingfish in Australia we have a legal limit of 65cm and we find it hard to get past rats to the big grand dad fish.

Over in NZ there exact same fish the kingie, there legal limit is 75cm. And they are the home of the big king but since there the home of the King they must have huge numbers of little rats. Good luck to the average kingie fisherman getting a legal king over there.

Cheers

Steve

[bluewater188]

I had to drop a nice 60cm Kingy over the side yesterday, kinda hard to be looking at a fish that big and getting it into your head that it is not legal The up side of the limit is there seem to be more of them, I keep getting on to them and they are stacks of fun on light gear. I reckon I will take the sport over the feed any day.

[caranx]

Id love to see 70-75cm here as the limit.....the more that make it to this size more breeding stock and increase in size. Use bigger baits or lures..get bigger fish is my motto. They wont get to NZ size that easy though.

[Josh88]

I think the legal size should be 70, the fisheries don't seem to do enough research before they apply these new limits, they need to analyse the effectiveness of fishing trends that are being introduced and proving successful on the fish and adequately lower some bag limits and increase size limits that reflect the fish's breeding cycle and sexual maturity, may make some people unhappy but it'll will improve the number and quality of fish for everyone in the future.

Cheers

Josh

And on the NZ kings steve, i'm heading over there in January so will let you know.

Edited April 14, 2009 by Josh88

[Kirks]

Hey Josh

Interms of the Kingfish limits over in Aus I do think they should be raised to 70-75cm. In the long run it will help with the numbers of fish and the size.

For the fisherman, BIG baits BIG fish, use that and should hopefully get the bigguns

[jim77]

G'day Steve

I was over in NZ last December and not only is their legal limit 75cm... Its also to the fork of the tail as opposed to the tip as it is in Australia. This means that their 'legal' would actually equate to and 80-85cm fish in Australia allowing 5-10cm for the length of the tail.

As to the Kiwis finding it hard to catch a legal... I think it depends on where you are fishing. I went out on a charter and we didn't catch one under size - most fish were about 85cm (to the fork) and we had a couple of big fish well over 1 metre - didn't bother measuring but they were about 125 cms. The biggest fish of the day went 21 Kgs and apparently that was an average fish!!

Anything they can do here to help the fish numbers grow is all good in my books. I will agree that it has been quite frustrating this summer with so many rats around but at the same time hopefully those fish will grow much bigger. I have only been fishing the harbour for about 5 years but in that time i have seen the number of Kingies increase dramatically - so imo the legal size increase has definitely helped with the fish population.

Here's to hoping we start catching the kiwis up in Kingy size!