IT’LL be some years before anyone even comes close to matching Cale Brown’s monster catch at Khancoban last weekend.
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The early bird catches the worm, and the old adage proved true, as Mr Brown hooked the 23 pound, 90 centimetre brown trout at 4.30 in the morning.
Using a hand-tied fly and a six-pound line, it took him roughly an hour to finally land the whopping catch.
Bragging rights will be his for quite some time now – and he doesn’t plan to stop telling the story any time soon.
“I didn’t have my waders on or anything, but I was eventually able to grab him by the tail,” he said.
“There was no way I could have released him after he was on the hook for that long, but there was no chance of that happening given the size of him.
“I’ve got a lot of big fish, but this one is probably the most special.
“You don’t see many trout this size, I certainly haven’t before and I’ve been fishing for about 60 years.”
Fishing guru Russell Mason said the chances of someone catching a trout that size again in the near future were “one in a million.”
“It’s got to be one of the biggest trout ever caught in mainland Australia,” he said.
“The fact he caught it on fly as well, it’s probably one of the biggest ever caught that way as well.”
While Mr Brown has been coy about where exactly in Khancoban he landed his catch, Mason said his opinion was that the whole area was likely to be a good place for trout fishing this season.
“The food is there for trout to grow to a pretty good size at the moment,” he said.
“Usually they’ll feed on yabbies and the like, but there’s a lot of redfin in there as well, once the trout get to that size they start feeding on other smaller fish as well.
“A lot of trout streams and lakes have been really good so far this season.”
While you make your own luck with a fishing rod, Mason said there was no shortage of skill involved in the catch.
“He was lucky to hook it, but from that point it has bugger all to do with luck,” he said.
“It’s all about managing the power of the fish, especially with only a six pound line.
“It would have taken a lot of patience, mental effort and skill to bring it in.”