A Stingray & Kingfish go hunting.

I was sitting on the deck enjoying a stunning morning, having a coffee when I saw the most bizarre thing!
I noticed a massive Stingray swimming below us, not uncommon in itself. Although they are predominantly small, .5 to a meter sort of sized fish.
But this fella was huge, at a guess I’d say well over meter - 1,2m sort of size.
Went and got my binos had a look and I could see these big white/silver flashes, and thought it’s just his wings.

Gave the binos to my son for a look, and then with my naked eye, I saw the massive yellow fish tail come out of the water and slash. Right above the Ray.
I said to my son did you see that, he said no. Turned out he’d seen a different stingray and was watching that, I saw the splash again and pointed to him where to look.
He’s instantly: “holy shit, there’s two massive fish fighting it”
I got the bino’s back for a look, and it turned out, and it seemed to me, they were hunting in a pack.
There were two massive kingi’s swimming with the stingray, often right above him, so it was really hard to see them. When they got onto fish there were big splashes as they broke the surface. It’s pretty shallow where they were. 1 - 1.5 meters.
We watched them for 15 minutes, the I tied a popper onto a rod and Sam went down and had a go.
He wouldn’t have stood a chance of landing them with the little baitcaster, I would guess the kingis were also in the 1.2 meter range. But it would’ve been fun trying.

Photos not the best on an old iPhone, but you can plainly see one of the Kingi’s in the shot.

Attachment 265162Attachment 265163

There's a few videos on YouTube of people catch kingies over ray. Especially on fly gear.

Ray riders, common in Tauranga Harbour

The rays disturb the baitfish, then the Haku attack

Yip good way to target harbour kingis. Often full of juvenile flounder

That makes sense Gibo...the ray spooks the flounder and kingis pounce. Guess the ray gets bits dropped from kingis table as reward. Nature sure has cool way of pairing up species.

Saltwater fly fishermen would be frothing at that!

The ray is probably a female long tail - they get massive. The male long and short tails are much smaller, usually under a meter wide and the female short tails are not usually quite that big. I just about dropped into a hole on one of the big girls while chasing crays in 50m once - the thing was that bit it was the same size as the bottom of the hole. Over 2m wingtip to tip - I did the human impersonation of a squid dumping ink and rather quickly went into reverse cog and got the heck outta the hole while I could!

Little known fact, them big crikey's with their stingers are a bit like sharks with their teeth - they stack new one (or four) up to replace the front running spike. This big lady had a good five or six lined up in the base of it's tail, which was a good 125mm across the base easy. Very impressive fish, probably 300-350mm deep at the head from what i could see out of the sand and I don't know if any was buried.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 7mmsaum

Ray riders, common in Tauranga Harbour

The rays disturb the baitfish, then the Haku attack

---

That’s absolutely what was going on.
It appeared the two kingi’s were riding just above, and would shoot off and smash something once in a while which the Ray disturbed.
I guess a bit like a Piwakwaka following us around in the bush.

Very cool to watch.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

That makes sense Gibo...the ray spooks the flounder and kingis pounce. Guess the ray gets bits dropped from kingis table as reward. Nature sure has cool way of pairing up species.

---

You would hope so but knowing kingi's they dont like sharing :D