With Awarua back in NZ and November and big kingfish beckoning an Axe mission to the Mokes was called for. Was also keen to test our farm at Pakiri as a good base HQ for multiday Axetrips. With a great weather forecast it wasn’t hard to put together an Axecrew – “Navy Seal” Yates, “Snoop” Gibbs and “Bounty Hunter” Petraska. After a nice BBQ and a spot of possum (and pheasant!) spotlighting Friday night we headed off bright and early from Leigh harbour for the Mokes. With calm weather all week and rumours of “blue water back to Tiri” we were pretty excited about the prospect of bombing some of the kingy pins out there. Alas when we arrived the vis was a pretty ordinary 5m which made it hard to really work the kingy spots. We dived a few new spots after tips from mates and while they were indeed great locations the vis thwarted us all except for Marcus who secured a nice 12kg kingy that made the mistake of swimming in close. Given the conditions we decided a snoop over on the north side of Burgess and accompanying islands was called for. After dropping the boys off at internals I parked up and headed off. Really interesting rock formations above and below the waterline. - every corner and cave opened up new bays. I wasn’t seeing many snapper but I was having a great time diving. Much of the country had drop offs that were a bit too steep for good snooping but as I headed out to the point rocks and guts started to open up looking promising. After working along this for a ways I dived down onto a particularly nice looking gut with steep sides, rocky bottom, and access to deep water – primo country. Being careful to keep my gun back I pulled to the edge and looked slowly to floor and right, then panned back to the left. Sitting about 8 foot along the wall was a big thumper snapper dead still facing directly away from me under a rocky ledge covered with weed. It was the perfect layup as he was facing away and had no idea I was there. I moved out and slowly closed the gap – I wanted to get close as I figured I was going to need to do the spear directly along spine from behind – he was a fat boy but still makes for a hard shot and I did not want to miss this guy. At the last moment he flared to the side – his sixth sense must have gone off - so I fired immediately at the increased target. I shot higher than I should have and knew it so worried about him busting off I let him play out without putting too much weight on the line. He was going nuts as they usually do but I managed to put just enough pressure to keep him out of the weeds and swim him towards open water where I could then just let him wear himself out. Didn’t take too long but I could see there wasn’t a whole lot of flesh on his back holding the mono so there were nervous moments until I could gently work him up, grab his big fat tail, and bear hug him until iki-ed. I was lucky as it wasn’t the greatest shot and I would have been gutted to lose a fish like this. He was a big bugger alright and I was confident he was well above 20 pounds. There was no way I was going to put him on the float and keep spearing given the risk of a noah taking him – so I held him in hand and did the long swim back to the boat, arriving at the same time as Snoop. We put him on the digital scales and he went 24 pounds. I was a reminder of just how big 30 pounders must be ... still on the lookout for one of those. - Kingie