CONTINUING on our recent “weird catches” theme, FISHO was contacted this week by reader Paul Seymour who had news of his own unusual catch.
According to Paul, he was fishing in 60m of water offshore of Portland, Victoria last week with his mates of “Team Malta” – Joe Pace, Brian Spiteri and skipper John “Snigger” Pizzi. The boys had enjoyed plenty of action, courtesy of seven southern bluefin tuna to 25kgs.
“Thursday morning we were trolling skirts and the portside rigger went off,” Seymour said.
“It put on a lovely fight and when Brian grabbed the trace we noticed a really strange sight … we boated the fish, it looked awesome straight out off the water.”
The unusual fish, that Fisho reckons looks like a sort of tailor tuna hybrid, is a butterfly mackerel, a species believed to be rarely encountered by anglers.
According to fish expert Dr Ben Diggles, the fish has been correctly identified and he has “seen them reported before from the east coast of Australia.”
Seymour says his catch created quite a bit of local interest: “when we got back to the ramp the local paper were there to photo it and do a special report about our rare catch.”
The unusual mackerel has been delivered to taxidermist Trevor Lumb and will eventually take pride of pride of place on a wall at Paul Seymour’s home.
Any other readers caught a butterfly mackerel? Let us know.
