Recent pic by LGFC member and distributed by Steve Lindeman with the query - wanem samting?

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An early response by Lester Rohrlach -

It's an "IDIOT FISH" !  No question, I believe.

I used a live one to hook a 90.5 kg silvertip whaler from Wahoo at a Titles a while ago, and in the write-up I even wrote about the Idiot Fish to some extent.

How do I know it's an I.F.?

Well we wuz headin' out abeam Lababia Is. on the 2nd day of the Titles, me, Garry Wong and John Cross drivin' and we seen a heap of birds and white water appearing for a few seconds here and there all over the place close in towards the island. We steamed in, me with spin-stick at the bow and I'm chuckin' the sliver slug right on the nose end of the pack when they're up and before it hits the water they've done a somersalt, gone down, and come up the other side of the boat, or out the back or over the other side. They're boiling on the baitfish and 4 seconds later they're down and you can see 'em just under the surface kinda zigzagging in unison every which way including around and back. Even the birds wuz havin' trouble keeping up.

Musta been on my 10th shot that they kept feeding straight ahead & one found the lure and we had him. Straight into the tuna tube.
We were going to target sharks again on the pin other side of Lababia and, JC says "Just what we need, they are just magic on sharks and billfish."

"What is it?" sez I, "Looks like one of the scads to me."

"It's an Idiot Fish," he says, "that's what we call them down south, they never know which direction they are racing in from one moment to the other, but the sharks just leeerv them!"

I think this is what he also calls a Finny Scad.

Cheers Lester


And this just in from Julian Pepperell (Julian had not read Lester's response) -

Hi Ian

Nice to hear from you. It’s a Mad Fish!! At least that’s what the Cairns deckies call them. They reckon they are mad because they are a cross between a queenfish, a trevally and a tuna. When the good Mr Rohrlach speaks about fish, all should sit at his feet and pay due homage. It is indeed a finny scad, Megalaspis cordyla. I checked Grant and Munro and you are right, their pics seem to have shorter pectorals, but they are both pretty small fish, I think, so maybe the fins lengthen with size? Anyway, checking with Fishbase.org shows a lot of pics, pretty well all with long pectorals, albeit with considerable variation. There is one issue, which is that finny scad are supposed to have a dark blotch or spot just on the upper rear part of the operculum (gill over), whereas this is not obvious in the pic. However, the flash of the camera may be masking that, or else the fish has been on ice for a while.

Cheers for now
Julian
 

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Posted 18/08/2006