THORNLANDS resident Dean Roche recently caught the fish of a lifetime.
His prize – a 1.4m, 100kg Queensland groper – was hooked at Harry Atkinson’s artificial reef in the middle of Moreton Bay.
“I’ve been fishing for 40 years, and this is the biggest fish I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“It took 45 minutes to swim it. This is day eight and I’m still sore.
“I really had to work for it.”
Roche, 40, said he turned to the internet to work out how to safely release the massive fish.
“I rang three friends but couldn’t get onto them, so I used good old Google to find out what to do,” he said.
“Fish this size suffer gut trauma from being brought to the shallows.
“I had to pierce the fish’s swim bladder to release the gas.
“It sat on the bottom about three or four metres down for a while, just making us worried.
“Then it swam off into the deep by itself. It was an epic day.”
Roche said he had been using heavy gear in pursuit of another species when he landed the groper.
“I was fishing with a 200lb line in a bid to catch blackspot tusk fish,” he said. “It was more like a tug of war.
“I think it’s more about luck than skill, but you learn what to do by talking to people.
“If I hadn’t been talking to a mate about catching these deep-water fish, I would never have landed the groper.”
The groper hasn’t been his only big catch.
“Besides the groper, my most epic catch was a 98cm flathead, caught in the Richmond River at Ballina,” he said.
Roche said his love of fishing began as a child, thanks to his father Michael.
“It’s what you do when you grow up at the Bayside,” he said.
“Dad has had a few boats and so have I.”
He now shares his passion with his wife, friends, and two sons, aged 10 and 12.
“I try to fish as much as I can – probably about fortnightly,” he said.
