First Footballer Trout

[Badone]

Mick, you did well getting 5 blue spot trout and your footballer all between 50cm and 80cm. I have dived the Bunkers for years and would be lucky to see one that fits the size range per day. Good catch.

[devocean]

Yeah I had them under the 5 bronze whalers I got

[Mick]

Mick, you did well getting 5 blue spot trout and your footballer all between 50cm and 80cm. I have dived the Bunkers for years and would be lucky to see one that fits the size range per day. Good catch.

90% of blue spot trout and footballers that I see are not in legal size range and most are over sized. Take into concideration human error or misjudging the size and the range shortens again. So realisticaly, someone that respects the law (like me) only shoot b spot and f ballers between 55cm and 75cm - just to be on the safe side. This theory worked for in the above picture. I passed up shooting the footballer countless times even though I did know it was around the 50cm mark. Alot of other spearos would of just shot it and worried about the size later.

By the way, it is not illegal to shoot an undersized or oversized fish. It is illegal to keep an undersized or oversized fish in your possession. In saying this, most spearo's these days are smart enough not abuse this power. Spearfisherman I know get quite upset if they misjudge the size of a fish or if fish gets off the spear but is so badly wounded that it is not going live much longer. its quite a disturbing feeling inside when you get it wrong.

Sorry, went off the subject there a bit.

Kind regards,

Mick

[Fishin_Dan]

Good to see everyone being responsible about it though Mick!

You'll have to show me how easy these buggers are to fillet though soon... I'm just trying to organise that Mackay/Airlie trip again!

[Badone]

I agree 100% Mick. Sometimes it is hard to judge the size of a fish underwater. I figure that if you have to think about whether a fish is legal or not then let it go. I was not questioning the legality of your fish, just making the point that it would be a rare day to catch 5 blue spots and a footballer all between 50 and 80cm.