Jewhunter Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 It's great to see that we all have an an opinion & are respecting the opinion of others. I said that I have never seen a blue spot that big. I'm sticking with that & will go with my 1st instinct which was that it is a Dusky. Nice fish mate. Cheers, Grant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noodles Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Many fish (and other animals as well) are chromatophoric. Flathead are an excellent example. 3 flathead can be caught in different locations and they will come out of the water looking completely different. Catch one on sand and it will come up lightly coloured with very little variation. Catch one on dark coloured mud or rock bottom and it will be nearly black. Catch one on scattered gravel or over weed beds and you will get the blotchy patterns. Blue-spotted flathead will do the same thing and they are quite likely to be caught with the blotchy marbling many people associate with the "Usual Dusky". I have caught over 100 open water flathead in the last 12 months including Blue-spot, Tigers and Marbled, and the spotties are not all exactly the same. They will however, always have the spots which can vary from bright blue to nearly white. The other thing is that I haven't caught any Duskies in open water over 12 - 15m deep or more than a couple of hundred metres from shore, and only 1 in the last year, since they are predominantly an Estuarine species and while they can be caught in oceanic water, they rarely venture very far from shore. Actually, I haven't caught a single dusky, but my son did on the Blacksmiths Bait Reef which is 6.5m deep and swimming distance to the beach and estuary entrance. The OP has reinforced that the fish was a Blue-Spot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macman Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 That is an absolute cracker of a flathead whatever species. At the risk of fuelling what probably shouldn't be a debate, it is really important that people are able to tell the difference between species, especially when there are laws that can see you being fined for getting it wrong. There isn't yet a slot size on duskies in NSW but there is a limit on number over a certain size, which I am pretty sure doesn't exist for blue spot, etc. So, it doesn't matter a rat's arse what everyone thinks in this forum based on a photo, but it could matter if inspected by fisheries. Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts