I spend the Dec holiday in the transkei. Unfortunately, the fishing was poor due to it being unusually windy, and unsettled. Moderate west, followed immediatly by 2-3 days string East (all directions of east) and then swinging back to moderate west.
Currents were very slight n-s or even light s-n. Water temp was ranging from 24 to 15, and would change between these overnight. Not great for fishing.
The only fish biting were red steenbras, and shallower nothing. Plenty bait, incl Natal stards, with coppers spitting up whole fresh natal sards.
One one day after not finding any blue water even the coppers wouldnt bite properly. As I called it a day I started reeling and went VAS. It gave a few nods to let me know it was a copper, but thereafter was easy. I thought it was a small fish, so took it incredibly easy so I could release it. we were in 98m of water. The fish dint take line, and only the odd mild nod.
About 10m below the boat the hook pulled. Great result, as it would swim back from there and i wanted to release it anyway.
Well 1min later it exploded out the water having bust its swim bladder, and eyes popping out its head.
We loaded it and noticed it had a significant portion of its tail missing (old injury) and I thought this was part of the reason for the poor fight. It was a sizable fish )39.5kgs so the tail injusry did not seem to be enough of a reason for the pap fish.
Upon cleaning the fish at the lauch I noticed some weird things.
Its liver was not the usual light pink, as was the 33kg fish we got earlier, but a dark mottled colour with hard black sections. The hard sections were very hard.
Then I removed its heart, At first I did not recognize it as being the heart. The heart was significantly larger than the 33kg's one, and it was white, not red, and was hard. It also had an enlarged section where the aorta entered the heart. I cut it open and inside the soft tissue was small in comparison to a healthy heart.
Clearly the tail was not the reason for the weakness in this fish. There could not have been much oxygenated blood in his system and the liver could not have been working too well.
Anyone ever come across something like this.
If it were a human, I would have bet he was a 60yr old alcoholic that smoked 60 camel pains per day since he was16yrs old.
The flesh was fine, and bar the tail injury, looked in fair condition.
Maybe good he is now out the gene pool.
