Ash Males

On the Thursday before Christmas, A mate and I went out to Harmers off Cape Patterson to a rough depth of 24 meters deep. We spent most of the dive exploring and looking for crays, But we only found a couple of crays in rock ledges way to deep to reach. At around 110 bar we decided to head back to the anchor and search around that.

As the old story goes, we should have looked there first as there was a Cray under a rock a size that I had never dealt with before!

I signaled to my buddy that I was going in. I took my gear off, lifted it above me and dropped down between two big rocks then under one of the rocks dragging my gear behind me where the Cray was. Surprisingly the Cray had no where to go and the hole he was in was to big for him to get a grip. Putting my torch down I grabbed him and pulled him fairly easily, when I rose from the rocks he put up a good fight in mid water but there was no way I was going to let him go at that stage.

After I finally worked out where my catch bag was I bagged him with a bit of a struggle but had him.
He was the only Cray I got on that dive. Getting back on the boat I didn't realize how big he really was until I ripped him out of the catch bag. It was definitely the biggest Cray I have ever pulled!

He weighed about 4.5 to 5 kg and was about 550mm long from nose to tail, not including horns and tentacles. Guess what I had on the table Christmas Day!