Birthday Kingies

For Chris's birthday we went out fishing for the day with Dan Selby to try to catch some of the elusive king fish.

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We met him bright and early at 5:30 in Brooklyn to get an early start on catching some live bait.   We motored out to the headlands near Palmy and caught some yakkas to tempt the larger fish with.

When I was booking the trip, for Chris's birthday surprise, I figured that I'd be a bit greedy and request that we catch some kingfish before we headed up the Hawkesbury to try our had at some other species.  After chasing these for almost 3 years now while everyone else in the boat catches them, I was first on the board with a 59 cm kingfish which was unfortunately not dinner sized.

After some more trolling Chris had a fish on and pulled in this giant at 77 cm.  This one was definitely a keeper, and the biggest one that Chris has ever pulled in.

With a huge grin on his face we started planning dinner...

And then I had another fish on!  Not only was this my SECOND kingie, this one was also going to find its way to dinner at a respectable 74 cm.

At this point the fish decided that they'd had about enough of us and stopped biting so we turned inland and motored up the Hawkesbury river.  Unexpectedly this was amazing beautiful and like being in a completely different area of the world.  There were very few boats around and few houses, only accessible via the river.  We stopped at a completely isolated spot to enjoy some fresh as possible kingfish sashimi, complete with the soy sauce and wasabi.

After stuffing ourselves with the amazing fish, we quickly sent our friends this picture, hoping that they could join us for some fish tacos in the evening because we clearly had more fish than we were ever going to be able to eat ourselves.

The afternoon didn't turn up many fish but you certainly can't complain when you've caught some kingies.  We came back to the boat ramp to torment the pelicans and the other fishos with our great catch.

It was great to watch all of the other guys cleaning their little fish on the table when our guide dumped both of our huge fish onto the table.  Someone even waited around to take our fish frames to eat because those fish are so good.

After a well deserved nap we got some friends together and enjoyed some amazing fish tacos in victory.

And just because we don't often get pictures with these fish, one more of the birthday boy.