What Is This Kingy Eating?

[Kingy]

In the past few months I have caught a few kingies with these in it's stomach!?! One kingy had about 150 in it's stomach, another had only a few. What are they???

They look like little baby balmain bugs or lobsters to me? What do all you clever people think?? They are only about 1cm in length.

They were all caught around the Broken Bay Area.

Kingy

[KingsRule]

Stole this from the salmon article found on the FR home page, but, this is what they look like to me

"Crab Larvae (Megalops) & my imitation.""

Edited February 12, 2007 by KingsRule

[Kingy]

Kingsrule, you know too much....slap slap!!

Well done... way ahead of me! Quick too!!

These are part of the plankton that drift in the water column waiting to grow and drift with the current or do the kingies pick these off from around rocky headlands where they may spawn???

just interested in learning another little kingy habit

kingy

[KingsRule]

Calling flattieman!

[lurespinner]

Gulp peeler crabs??

any1 tried em? mite b worth a try...

[sifisho]

Yeah I am going to punt on crab larvae as well. I found this picture of the stomach contents of a Chinook salmon (picture might be a bit small), which kind of looks a bit similar...

Also discovered that crab larvae (blue swimmers at any rate) become benthic (i.e. bottom dwelling) when their carapace with is between 4 and 10mm so I would guess the ones you found are still planktonic.

[PPSGT]

I made a megalops fly just like the one on the FR site after reading the article.

I only made one, and I tied it under a water filled bubble float and threw it out into a bubbling mass of Salmon of North head on 3kg gear.

A king grabbed it nearly as soon as it hit the water and headed straight for the bottom -

and I had no chance off stopping it, so I guess they like the taste of them.

Have landed plenty of salmon like this on the same rod and rig

But my outfit has no chance of even slowing a rat king if it grabs it, and I reallyonly use it to have fun with

the salmon, anything heavier and you just end up skull dragging them through the water

Jason

Edited February 18, 2007 by PPSGT

[Flattieman]

Definitely megalops. It's the second morpholigical stage of crabs (the first being the zoea).

Flattieman

[tomahawk1999]

It's not unusual to have these little buggers grab hold of you when your out surfing reef breaks,

have also seen lot's of them hanging around flotsam out wide.

Usually when the waters warm.

Little dolphin fish love them.