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The Fishing Paper

Lifetime's beating in Claret Waters By Reid Forrest

Great Kingie

With the tides going all the wrong the way and backed by an average forecast, we headed out of Havelock early in the morning. We looked in at two spots that often held kingfish and they were green as a leprechaun the day after St Patrick's Day, so with our hopes of 10m plus viz dashed, we kept the hammer down and headed towards the Outer Sounds and Cook Strait.
A pinnacle near the Pelorous Sound entrance had 8m viz, but was very hazy with a lot of loose silt hanging in the water. Schools of blue moki, leatherjackets and sweep swam around us, with several blue cod and red moki sitting looking at us inquisitively from cracks in the rocks. After 45 minutes of patrolling the area, we jumped back in the boat and headed for Offal Point.
As we geared up, we could see the bottom 4m below and thought, "Oh well, at least we will be able to see the end of the gun." The reef runs straight out from the shore like an extension of the ridge above. The bottom was bedrock with scattered brown algae and falling away on either side to muddy sand and broken shells. My dive buddy Glen, with camera in hand, was just about to dive when a small kingfish appeared and looked quizzically at his fins reflecting sunlight in the water. My trigger happy instincts took over and I swung the 1.4m Edge Superfrog up from my side, but as I did so, four more yellowtails appeared from the murky water to my right. I swung back and more kingies turned up, so I hastily packed in a last breath and dived towards the top of the pinnacle, at 10m.
Flattening out midwater and sinking slowly, I looked up and saw four good sized, tightly packed kingfish cruise in from the left and I swung the Edge up and lined up on the bigger fish. I thought, "Yep that's a nice sized fish of about 15-18kg." I squeezed the trigger as they started to dive off the edge of the reef, but the shaft took a lot longer to hit the fish than I would have expected. I started to doubt how fast these rubbers were shooting the spear, never thinking for once that the fish could have been further away and much bigger than I first thought. The shooting line was horizontal in the water and a split second later the gun flew out of my hand, so I grabbed for the float-line as it shot past my face.
The water was around 30m deep and my shooting line was 25m, so with line still pulling through my hands I finned like crazy out into open water. The next 20 minutes was a blur, but I was seriously glad of all the training I had been doing for the Coast to Coast, as this fish towed me up and down the coastline trying to get back towards the reef.
Several times the float came close and fearing the fish was near the bottom, I put as much pressure on the line as I dared and was pulled underwater. What a rush! I realised how much I'd been missing this sort of action over the past few months.
Everytime I thought the fish was stuffed, it made another big run and the gun and float line disappeared into the murk. Finally, after about 30 minutes I got hold of the shaft and let the fish pull me down slowly as I worked my way down the shaft. As I reached to grab its tail I realised HOLY HELL, my hand wouldn't reach around there and the kingi wasn't having a bar of this, tearing off with me in tow until I let go and grabbed for the floatline.
Another five minutes of stalemate and I knew he was getting stuffed; back to the gun, then the shooting line, then down the shaft. Holding one hand at the base of the shaft where it went into the kingi, I went for the bear-hug, wrapping my arms and legs around the fish while getting the beating of a lifetime as the kingi tried to gain its final freedom. I shoved my hand through its gills, made a fist in its mouth and reached for the knife to issue the final blow. As the water turned claret red, I released my death grip and saw the huge size of this fish for the first time. Not only was it longer than my gun, but was almost as round as me (okay, so I'm built like a Norwegian racing sardine, but this was still a big fish).
Swimming back to the anchored boat I realised how stuffed I was and was shaking with the adrenaline. It took one person on the boat and another in the water to slide the fish onboard and its tail still stuck out the end of the cooler bag. We bottomed out the 30kg sales, so had to use the big certified scales at the winery to weigh the fish a couple of hours later - 36kg! A gigantic fish for the South Island and the Marlborough Sounds especially.