JACK Freestone has just caught a mulloway that was tagged in Brisbane Water near Gosford on the NSW Central Coast on July 17, 2015. There’s nothing special in that as almost 1000 mulloway have been tagged under the ANSA NSW NEWTAG /NSW DPI Angler Research Project that is running under the Mulloway Recovery Plan in NSW. What is special is that Jack caught the same fish again at the same spot, same time and same stage of the tide on the October 14, 2015. Jack tagged and measured the mulloway at 1060 mm and recaught it at 1065 mm before he let it go again.
Luke Reilly, who is part of Jack’s inner circle, goes onto say, “if you look at the photos, in the first one Jack has a jumper on and it was obviously back in winter. Then second photo is the recapture in warmer times. Also the original tag which had a bit of weed on it, and was actually hard to distinguish, especially at night. I didn’t notice it had previously been caught until I was about to tag it. When Jack first caught this fish we thought it may have been one we’d caught before. It had a few scars around its head (which are evident in the first photo) and we have caught a few at very similar length before we started tagging. However this time round it was completely healed, what an amazing fish”.
