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I am constantly amazed by the fishing up here in Port Hedland. The variety and quality of fish available to the average angler makes fishing both exciting and rewarding no matter what your budget and experience level. While fishing from my tinny (aluminum dinghy) in the harbour recently, I was caught by surprise when I landed my first ever sawfish. When I first hooked up I thought I was snagged but the wild head shakes were a dead give away and before long 50lb fireline was screaming off my Penn 330GTI like I had just hooked up to a passing boat.
Normally I can predict the type of fish
on the end of my line before I see it but in this case I was
totally stumped. There were short powerful runs followed by long
periods of nothing interrupted by sudden short violent yanks.
No fish I know fights like this. As the fight drew to a close
I knew this was something different. The runs had stopped but
the violent head shakes had increased. It felt like I was pulling
up an underwater cable but someone was pulling on the other end.
I started to wonder if I was the victim of a practical joke.
When I finally caught sight of the biggest
sawfish I had ever seen I was absolutely awestruck. It had inadvertently
become entangled in my line (around that weapon hanging off its
face) and managed to stay tangled long enough so I could bring
this prehistoric looking creature to the surface. Not spent yet,
the violent head shakes continued making it impossible to land.
Those knives hanging off its nose could inflict some really nasty
injuries to the unwary and I wasn’t taking any chances.
I managed to tie a piece of rope around the ‘saw’ and
hold the beast long enough to get some pics but the last thing
I wanted to do was kill it so I untangled the fishing line, removed
the rope and let it go. I was unable to measure accurately how
long it was but I estimated that it was about 12ft in lenght
based on a comparison to my boat.
I did some research when I got home to
find out more about the monster I had tangled with and found
out some interesting facts. This particular sawfish is known
as a green sawfish and is related to the ray family. They have
been known to grow up to 7 meters long and with those spiky facial
features they are quite adept at alluding capture. I was fishing
in 60ft of water near the top of the tide on the last quarter
of the moon using a combination of mulies (pilchards) and squid.
Two days later I was fishing a creek mouth
not far out of town for Barramundi when my line screamed off
with familiar fury. I hoped this was to be the biggest Barra
in history but was sure my live mullet had been gobbled by a
hungry gutted shark and would be busted off any minute. Suddenly
mid battle my other rod started to howl. The force of the fish
on that line was such that my rod fell over and started heading
for the water. I leapt into the water (still fighting the fish
on my other rod) and managed to rescue it from a certain watery
grave. Now came the interesting task of fighting two fish on
two rods. With no one else to help this was going to be quite
a task but it wasn’t long before I realised the same fish
had taken both baits. I allowed the lighter line to sever and
continued the fight with my penn 330. This time the fight was
familiar. Violent head shakes, short runs, heavy tug of war with
an unknown subterranean object. I was hooked up to another sawfish.
This time I was on land so the pics were
much better and my tape measure confirmed this monster to be
3.5 meters long! I had never caught a sawfish in my life and
now I had managed to catch two of them in totally different circumstances
in the same week. Go figure!
...Shane Baker
ShaneBaker@sportfishworld.com
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