A 175-plus-pound record cobia — the largest caught on rod and reel ever recorded — wouldn’t have made it to the boat if the angler had listened to his captain.
“It was a great catch by the young man,” said Capt. Drew Clowes, of Jazz Charters in Perth, Australia. “I must have told him to break it off five or six times thinking it was a big stingray sitting on the bottom.
“I’m glad he didn’t in the end,” Clowes chuckled. The fish, weighed on certified commercial lobster scales in front of a weighmaster from the Perth Game Fishing Club, was 79.6 kg — a little more than 175 pounds. It outweighs the current IGFA all-tackle world record by roughly 40 pounds.
The 18-year-old angler, Koby Duncan, a commercial angler by trade, was on a 21st-birthday charter for one of his buddies. He was working a 1.5-ounce Z-Man HeadlockZ jighead on the bottom with a 7-inch Z-Man Jerk ShadZ (Redbone color). They were jigging a reef pinnacle in 100 feet of water about 12 nautical miles off Perth on the south side of Rottnest Island. After the hookset, the big fish wrapped itself up in “cabbage weed” on the bottom, which is why the captain thought it was a stingray.
They catch the occasional cobia in this fishery off the southwest coast of Australia, but the species is not common. The primary targets are yellowtail kingfish, similar to California yellowtail; pink snapper, which grow to about 20 pounds; and west Australian dhufish, which top out at 50 pounds.
Monster Fish on Light Tackle
Duncan was under-gunned with an Ocean’s Legacy Inshore Casting rod. In Australia, they use a PE rating system for rods, which is based on the recommended diameter of braided line. His spinning outfit was PE3. Translated for Americans, that’s roughly the equivalent of a 6000-size setup. It was loaded with 15 kg (33-pound-test) Nomad Panderra braid.
Once the fish cleared the weeds, it made some strong runs, and Clowes wasn’t sure what Duncan was tied into.
“It was such a heavy fish. You gotta remember, it’s like four bags of concrete with a tail,” Clowes said in an interview with 6PR, Perth Radio. “And it’s like, how do you get it up? He persisted, and I was like, ‘Oh, man. I don’t know what you’re doing.’ For 10, 15 minutes he was just stalemated. And then, all of a sudden it came up … It popped up maybe 30 meters in front of the boat, and its head came out of the water. It had me a bit baffled. I said, ‘That’s the biggest Port Jackson shark head I’ve ever seen in my life,’ and then its head went down and its tail came up. And I was like, ‘That looks like a sturgeon fish.’ I’m like, ‘What is going on?’”
At some point during the 30-minute fight, the big cobia made a run down the side of Clowes’ 53-foot Westcoaster, Jazz IV, and they got a good look at it. “When we got a glimpse of it going down the side of the boat, it was like, “Oh God, that’s amazing!” Clowes said. He cautioned Duncan to slow down and take it easy with the fish.
“The young fella was going pretty hard on that gear. That gear was probably maxed out,” Clowes said. “I was telling him ‘you’re grabbing the spool. You’re loading a PE3 rod. You can’t go too hard with that. You’ve got to flatline off the spool, pretty much. You go at it a bit hard, and that rod might explode.’
“But he didn’t give up. He’s a young fella, commercial fisherman from Jurien Bay, so he’s no slouch. Strong as an ox, but yeah, he was definitely puffing by the end of it.”
Gaffing the World Record Cobia
There was jubilation when the mate, Harley Jarosz, sunk a gaff in the fish. The group included several commercial fishermen, and they knew the caliber of fish they were dealing with. Several of them jumped in to help haul it onboard. It was flopping on deck by the time Cowers got down from the fly bridge.
“A bunch of young lads juiced up on adrenaline had it up over the marlin board and up the steps in no time,” Clowes said.
On the deck, the fish measured 203 cm (about 80 inches) total length. It had shrunk to 197 cm by the time they got it back to the docks. Its widest girth was 104 cm (about 41 inches). It is absolutely the fish of a lifetime, crushing a world record that has stood for 40 years. The current IGFA all-tackle world record was caught in 1985 at Shark Bay off northwest Australia by Peter Goulding.
A Rare Cobia off Southern Australia
“This is a very rare catch for Australia, as far south as we are in Perth,” Clowes said. In the southern hemisphere, everything from the climate to the ocean currents are the opposite of what North Americans experience in the northern hemisphere.
Cobia, a warm-water species, are much more prevalent in northern Australia, where the waters are warmer and where Goulding’s world record was caught. Clowes credits the Leeuwin Current for the presence of Duncan’s giant cobia in southern Australia off Perth.
The Leeuwin Current, like a mirror-image of the Gulf Stream, carries warm water north to south along the west coast of Australia. “At the moment, the Leeuwin current is running really strongly,” Clowes said. “The bigger the Leeuwin Current is, the more pelagic species we see down in our neck of the woods.”
Every 10 years or so, when the current is abnormally strong, fishing gets very good for pelagic species off Perth. Clowes said you can see the effects of the current during billfish tournaments, which put up big numbers when the Leeuwin is running strong.
What to do With the World Record Cobia?
At the moment, Clowes has it stored whole in a freezer in case there’s a need to weigh or measure it again for record consideration. Duncan said he wants to have it mounted.
“I’m pretty keen to put it on a big wall and mount it.” Duncan told 6PR. “That would be my one. And find out how old it is and whatever research the boys want to do, that would be another interesting one to find out.”
