Deciphering fishing reports

A mate of mine called me a while back and told me his boat had accounted for something like twenty kingfish offshore - he doesn't stretch the truth.

On the face of it, that sounds like a cracker of a day and would indicate that the kingfish are running red hot.

A few days later I heard some anecdotal reports of kingies on the prowl - Chinese whispers that left detail out of the equation. The report centred around a boat that had caught twenty kings. While everyone was preparing their kingie gear and heading offshore, I stayed in the river and fished for jewies and flathead.

After speaking with my mate later, I discovered he'd fished for eight hours with four people on board. The fish weren't trophies and hovered around just legal size.

Doing the maths tells me that they'd landed about 2.5 fish per hour for the boat, or 0.6 of a fish per person per hour. Or just over a fish per person every couple of hours. In actual fact they'd worked extremely hard for their fish.

To me that doesn't sound like red hot fishing at all!