Sean Burns 6.5kg Catface Rockcod

Earlier this year found me looking down at the green dark line marking the sand and reef in 50ft of water while spearfishing. After a pretty quite morning on the fish side and on transit to another reef on the boat the fish finder bounced from 40ft to 50ft in the space of 20 meters and there was good structure to spearfish in.  On the first drop to the bottom I drifted down without moving a muscle and a dark shape sitting on the sand which I thought was a log suddenly moved and edged towards the ledge. Now confirmed the log was infact a good size Cat Face and lucky for me it had not chosen the best hole to hide in. With it's head sticking half out the reef I positioned the speargun and shot through it's skull and made my way to the surface with an absolute prize catch. @ 6.51 kg this was my biggest Cat Face and the family on the boat had already called home to get the braai ready. It was a great fish and will be the last that I shoot of this species. What was upsetting was that the flesh of this old cod was tough and not good eating at all. It would be interesting to know if all big rockies taste so bad???

It was also good to see that on that reef there were a number of good size reefies and my brother in-law missed a daga and I missed a GT in the 10kg range.

I raised a few beers to the old cod later that day.

Cheers

Burnsie