Lungfish that destroyed my hook.

[aidan.cronin]

I woke early this morning with an itch to fish. Luckily a keep my car perminantly packed ready to go and was soon driving though the darkess to a spot I had sussed out on google maps. On arrival at the spot, I quickly unpacked and set some crawdads out. After half an hour or so, the sun began to rise and the fog thickened heavily. The surface action began to heat up with Tilapia smashing the froth that flowed into the back eddie I was fishing.

I soon noticed that the float on my handline was on the move. I rushed over, gathered up the slack and struck what felt like a snag. A snag that then began to move towards me at a great rate of knots. It came to a halt right beneath my feet. I gripped my line and began to wind in what was clearly a massive fish. The fish drifted lazily to the surface with its massive brown scales and undersized eyes, I immediatly recognised the meter plus monster. It was a LUNGFISH!. The Lungfish paused for a moment, presumably confused as to whether it was hooked, and then began to thrash furiously. It ran hard with a display of shear power. I held the hand reel tight being careful not to let the taunt line shed my hand. I waited out the Lungfish's struggle for as long as i could before it finally broke free. I retrieved my line, inspecting my long shank hook that was now straight... Lesson learnt.

I'm not sure if the Australian Lungfish is more common than I previously thought or was I just lucky enough to stumble across one? It was a shame that I couldn't land such a impressive fish, I could almost touch it at one point. On the upside I found a Yellow Tsnami Super bass lure tangled on a tree branch. Score!

[Guest]

Enjoyed the read Aidan, better luck next time

Cheers

Darren

[Surfingant]

Lungfish are fairly common around the place, a few on here have hooked into them.

[rayke1938]

Totally protected species but they do go hard quite common in Wivenhoe,Somerset and North pine dams and after the floods also below those dams.Think it may be breeding season as we are seeing quite a few at NPD . Think Adrian may have had one on on Saturday the way it ran then bricked him.

Cheers

Ray

[aidan.cronin]

Thought I might wrap this one up.

I was fishing early this morning. Got sick of nothing taking my lures so I chucked in an unweighted line with some bread on it in order to catch some Tilapia but ended up with this Lungfish. I took a couple of quick snaps and sent him on his way. It bent my little bait holder hook into a circle hook.