The 175-pounder outweighs the current IGFA record by 40 pounds.
A 175-plus-pound record cobia — the largest caught on rod and reel ever recorded — wouldn’t have made it to the boat if the angler had listened to his captain.
“It was a great catch by the young man,” said Capt. Drew Clowes, of Jazz Charters in Perth, Australia. “I must have told him to break it off five or six times thinking it was a big stingray sitting on the bottom.
“I’m glad he didn’t in the end,” Clowes chuckled. The fish, weighed on certified commercial lobster scales in front of a weighmaster from the Perth Game Fishing Club, was 79.6 kg — a little more than 175 pounds. It outweighs the current IGFA all-tackle world record by roughly 40 pounds.
The 18-year-old angler, Koby Duncan, a commercial angler by trade, was on a 21st-birthday charter for one of his buddies. He was working a 1.5-ounce Z-Man HeadlockZ jighead on the bottom with a 7-inch Z-Man Jerk ShadZ (Redbone color). They were jigging a reef pinnacle in 100 feet of water about 12 nautical miles off Perth on the south side of Rottnest Island. After the hookset, the big fish wrapped itself up in “cabbage weed” on the bottom, which is why the captain thought it was a stingray.
They catch the occasional cobia in this fishery off the southwest coast of Australia, but the species is not common. The primary targets are yellowtail kingfish, similar to California yellowtail; pink snapper, which grow to about 20 pounds; and west Australian dhufish, which top out at 50 pounds.
Monster Fish on Light Tackle
Duncan was under-gunned with an Ocean’s Legacy Inshore Casting rod. In Australia, they use a PE rating system for rods, which is based on the recommended diameter of braided line. His spinning outfit was PE3.
