Portland Kingfish

I headed to Portland with my family for the Australia day weekend and took my kayak along for the ride. I fished from the breakwall for an hour on Friday evening and didn't get a nibble at all. It seemed nobody else was either as there were hundreds of rods along the breakwall and none of them were bending far. I set out again at 7am the next morning and unloaded the kayak and gear and chatted to a fisher coming in from a 2hr session on his yak who had caught about 5 pinkies. I spent at least 3hrs drifting and moving from the trawler wharf over to the breakwall with only one significant bite in that time which was dropped after a few seconds. At around 10:30am I was drifting towards the breakwall behind the ship in the photo and hooked a nice Kingfish. I was confident I could land it as I was using 50lb line this time and didn't want to repeat last years events when i dropped a kingy while netting it when the 8lb line wore through. It took me some time to boat it and I received some cheers and applause from the fishers on the breakwater once it was in the net. A nice bloke on the breakwall assisted me in measuring the fish and helping me out of the yak so I could kill it and bleed it. Then it was back to the trawler wharf and a phone call to the missus to bring ice for my bucket before I headed out for another hour or so just paddling around. The following evening I filleted the fish and cooked it with my uncle and aunt and was delighted with the taste and texture of my fish.

 A photo of me out from the trawler wharf taken by a passer by and posted on facebook, which my mother in law noticed by chance. The fish was just shy of 70cm and about 3kg and cleaned up into a good size pair of fillets.