IN the aftermath of one of the wettest summers on record across the inland and east coast, many anglers have impatiently waited for any benefits of the deluge to kick in. One angler who didn’t have to wait too long was western NSW based Ken Smith, who got quite a surprise while visiting Sydney recently.
Smith told Fisho early this week that he’d hoped to sample some of the summer pelagic surface fishing action Sydney Harbour is renowned for.
“WE hadn’t had any luck further up the harbour so we decided to take a look up past the ‘coathanger’ [Harbour Bridge] to see if anything was around,” he said.
“There was a stack of floating timber and stuff near the bridge and the water was pretty bloody dirty so I wasn’t expecting too much. I chucked a popper at a big log bobbing along on the tide. It landed a fair way behind it and I had it blooping nicely when there was this massive explosion and it was gone! Bugger me, it was loud!”
Smith told Fisho the unseen fish bullodozed its way back under the log before he could get the upper hand.
“I thought I must’ve been dreamin’,” said an excited Smith.
“It came to the boat and I got a good look before it turned and bolted. It was a bloody Murray cod!”
Smith went onto boat the cod and, incredibly, release it again in clear view of the world’s most famous bridge – and a local police boat.
“Yeah … apparently I was in the main channel and had to move before a bloody Rivercat mowed me down. Had to get a photo first though, who woulda believed me otherwise?” Smith laughed.
Wondering how a Murray cod could possibly be caught in Sydney Harbour we contacted renowned fisheries scientist Dr Ben Diggles.
“As most anglers would know, the Murray cod is very territorial and will aggressively fend off any invasions on its ‘personal space’,” Diggles told Fisho.
“But how, geographically, this individual cod found its way into Sydney Harbour is mind boggling. For a start, the species’ natural habitat is within western flowing rivers, none of which have any possible connection to the Sydney region.”
“My guess is this fish was a farm dam escapee that got washed in somewhere well upstream within the Parramatta River catchment,” he mused.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this cod saw his ‘territory’ drifting away, in this case the log he was living (and was caught) under, and just tried to stay with it, no matter what the consequence,” Diggles added.
Fisho tried to contact Ken Smith again after hearing comical rumours he’d caught a “big kingfish” in his local river after returning to inland NSW. A nearby resident we tracked down confirmed the report was, unsurprisingly, bogus.
“It was a load of rubbish of course … it was only a rat king…”
