| Me and a mate were fishing soft plastics along the wall for kuha at Vanha Kaupunki and it was not going well. I'd been snagged and lost more lures in one afternoon than I had all season. I refreshed with a cold can and a new lure before deciding to cast a little further out. Frustration *again* as I thought I was snagged on the first cast but then it moved just a little. Thinking it was an old shopping trolley or a loose branch I gave the line a flick to try and dislodge it but the line began to run. It was fish on! It felt like I was hauling a laundry bag full of socks through the water. We knew it was big when we saw the current change direction. With the first flash of colour my mate said something like "Jeezus H, you've hooked a croc!". I wasn't sure i was gonna be able to land it with my kid's rod, which was bent almost double, so I yelled out for a net. My mate got down on the boardwalk and tried to get his under it but it wouldn't fit. He tried hauling it up anyway but the weight of it snapped the handle on his net! One of the other nearby blokes jumped into the water at that point and the three of us hauled this whopper out onto the bank. There was no point in even thinking about trying to keep it, we'd caught the bus that day, and hauling what must've been nearly 50lbs of fish home on public transport wasn't gonna be fun for anyone. We took a few quick photos and measurements before rightly deciding to get ol'mate back into the water so he could continue to strengthen the gene pool. Thankfully we didn't have him out for too long and after a moment getting some water back through his gills, he turned and I swear he gave us all the hairy eyeball before flicking his whopping tail and disappearing below.<br />
The bloke who jumped into help earned a frosty cold beer for his troubles and my mate and I retired for the afternoon, figuring there'd be no better action had that day. |
