Peter Morse: Australia Along the Fatal Shores
This is an old interview with Peter but it is one of my favourites. I thought I may share it with you here.
Peter MorseAustralia’s Peter Morse talks about the four species of bonefish found around his native land, the jaw-dropping power of New Guinea Bass, the amazing species of fish found on the Australian mainland, and wade fishing in the land of crocodiles.
Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler
Podcast Excerpt: “The New Guinea bass is the pit bull terrier of the fish world. It lives in dense river cover. It’s a freshwater species. There’s very little known about it actually, scientifically. It grows to 50, 60 perhaps 70 pounds. It’s a member of what you would call the snapper family. A cubera snapper would be a close relative. So imagine a cubera snapper living in dense, fallen jungle trees that have tumbled into the river amongst rock bars in these big rivers, and basically it eats whatever it wants to. There are two species: one is the black bass and the other is the spot-tail bass, and I recall when I was guiding up there a fellow landed a spot-tail bass about 35 pounds. And we used to lip-gaff these things and lift them into the boat for photographs, and as it came in this 35-pound bass spewed up a whole possum.”
Podcast music by permission of Old Medicine Crow Show and Steve Hemkens of Orvis and the Wailing’ Jennys.