Hey Dave!!!
Funny you should pop up! I had a few other photos of you with trout from that trip I was going to put up along with the big mumma above!
You cracked a few quality models in the 9-15kg range that trip.......take a month of Sundays to get one that big back near the mainland.
I still remember that great fight you had with that nice GT in the shallows at Kenn.......it was an awesome spectacle to film!
Mark,
It's a Plectropomus leopardus, mate.
It would appear that all of the live coral trout pro fishers don't get that far out. The reefs are too far out and too small in size to hold the mass quantities of plate sized trout they want for live fish export, so it would appear that the smaller trout get eaten by passing fishing vessels/cruising vessels and the big mummas are too large for the average angler to deal with!
You're right about the local vernacular too.......the amount of name variants of these 'groupers' have is staggering to say the least.
I listed the 4 most common ones I know of, which are Plectropomus leopardus (common), Plectropomus laevis (footballer), Plectropomus maculatus (bar cheecked),
Variola louti (coronation/lunar tail).
The irony is that they do infact belong to the tropical "groupers" and I have no idea why they are called trout at all!
Brandon,
That trout that Matton Murata has is a bit bigger than Kenji-sans fish! That's an animal!
Kenji's was close, though that thing is a demon!
Aaron.