Directly from the man himself:

“Conditions were great the evening before and I got a few good leeries at my usual spring low spot at the river mouth.

Overnight the wind changed to a south Easter and the sea was in its head the next day but the mouth still looked good for some kob on the push.  I started fishing just as the tide started pushing and I was fishing a really light setup with 10lb braid and 15lb leader.

I had basically finished my retrieve and started walking up the bank and was simply dragging the paddletail along.

The cracker must have been feeding opportunistically on the drop off when it picked me up and ran about 30m straight away. I was helluva lucky the tide was pushing or else I wouldn’t have stood a chance with the tackle I was using.  It was a dogged 25 min or so fight and I managed to lift it on to a bank with an incoming wave. Up until the last 5 min of the fight I thought it was a big kob, so I was pleasantly surprised to see I had fluked a cracker on lure!

Next problem was that I had no photographer but luckily there was a big sand pool that had formed on the previous high tide where I stayed with the fish while my wife arrived to snap a few pics. It was incredible to spend the ten minutes or so with the fish watching how she slowly revived to full strength and swam of strongly. Not sure I can repeat a fluke like that in a hurry !

Two days before I was lamenting what a tough year it had been fishing wise, if it was easy  I suppose it wouldn’t feel half as good.”

Awesome.