Recently myself and my brother have teamed up with Daiwa and we got a heap of new reels for us to use off the rocks. Pretty excited to use them this is the mayhem that happened on their first outing and my Dogfight 8000 certainly got christened with a monster of a fish!

The plan for the day was to film a bit of slide baiting for sambos and King’s and a video we are making on it about chasing them off the rocks. My mrs also came with and she has been wanting to land a good fish for a while now and after her last outing loosing 2 good dhufish and a big sambo off the rocks in one session she was out to redeem herself. We set up my Maven with the Dogfight on it, 200lb leader and 100lb braid. Out goes the first herring and it was her turn first when it went off. Short wait and the rod is screaming in the rod holder. She gets to it and I’ve tightened the drag until I though there was enough and the rod was pretty loaded. Straight into the reef and busted off pe10. Far out that was a big fish!!

Another live herring was sent out after a quick re rig on the same gear but this time a much longer wait. The rod screamed off again and I’ve ran to it and tightened the drag until I was starting to get pulled off my feet and this fish didn’t slow down and ran very fast to my right before a big set has smashed my line and got it tangled onto a bommie about 10m from me. I backed off the drag and let this fish drag 100 odd meters of line through the reef while seeing my line tangled on weed on top of a rock. For 15 minutes I went back and forth with the fish taking line and me slowing and gently pulling this fish back through my line tangled on the rocks. Eventually it came free and I’ve raced to wind up all the slack line. Thinking I had lost it I’ve finally came tight again but the fish was a long long way to my left almost back in front of where I originally hooked it. I’ve put a lot of pressure back on and up popped a huge sambo! Bit of forced direction changes and I had the fish ready to wash into a crack and try leader it up. As the fish came around a large wave has lifted the fish and cut my slide leader off on a barnacle. The fish got picked up and slammed into the crack I was planning on landing it in but no longer connected to anything. I’ve freaked out and grabbed the gaff and somehow managed to get to it before another wave came. Feeling pretty bad about having to gaff the fish to get it up when I wanted to release it, but after the fight and getting trashed on the rocks it was in bad shape anyway. I decided that even though it was a shame to have to keep it I couldn’t let it go to waste so I’ve cut the fillets off and I ended up carrying them out on the hour walk to the car. It made for a painful walk back but it will be eaten, used as bait and burley so it won’t be wasted. This fish is my my second best landbased and made my 105cm Brag Matt look tiny, had to be 30-33kg and what a fish to christen the brand new Dogfight on its first outing!!

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