This time, it was the world’s biggest fish – a whale shark – and a big one at that.

Skipper ‘Crusty’ and deckhand Michael Muscat fortunately had the GoPro video camera out when a very large whale shark was spotted at the 12-Mile Reef off Bermagui on Thursday.

Crusty reckons the whale shark was at least 20 foot or 6-metres long. Crusty and his deckhand Michael a few weeks ago were in Exmouth, WA doing fishing charters when they also encountered a whale shark, although not as big as this one. 

“The shark seemed in no hurry and was interested in rubbing up against the boat,” Crusty said. “In the end, we drove away from it.”

There had been reports of at least three other whale sharks sightings off Bermagui in recent days, according to Scott Bradley from Bermagui Bait & Tackle, but it was unclear whether it was the same or different sharks.

The water was currently a very warm 24.5 degrees on the Continental Shelf and bright blue in colour, which were the right conditions to bring tropical species such a whale sharks down to the Far South Coast.

Another fisherman spotted a whale shark at Montague Island around this time last year. Click here for story

Crusty reckons there could even be tropical game fish such as wahoo heading down and he suggested trying trolling around Montague Island in the early morning for one of these sought-after but rarely encountered species in local waters. 

Two local Bermagui fishermen also yesterday had a marlin chase a kingfish at the Fowl House area of Montague Island. There have also been numerous dolphinfish caught in local waters recently and click here for all the South Coast fishing news and reports. 

Staying out at Montague Island, Narooma father and daughter diving pair Jon and Georgia Poyner had another great dive with grey nurse sharks on Thursday. They counted around 10 individual sharks at the island. This follows similar numbers encountered on another dive a few weeks ago.