Local surfer lands a magical catch

A BREAMLEA surfer struck gold during a surf on the Bellarine Peninsula when a snapper flew through the air and ended up in his bare hands.

Lachlan Brown was surfing at one of his favourite surf breaks when an encounter with a pod of dolphins and a school of snapper saw a nice sized red beast almost land in his lap.

“I was basically sitting out in the water by myself after my mates had made their way in, and all of a sudden I saw them pointing and jumping around on the beach,” Brown said.

“A huge pod of dolphins emerged, and they were splashing and whacking around, I was pretty freaked out and thought it could have been something else.

“Then out of nowhere this big snapper flew through the air and landed right next to me as I scrambled for the shore.

“The dolphins I think had knocked it out and there it was beside my board, so I grabbed it and paddled in with it.”

Brown said the encounter was like nothing he had seen or heard of before, and as he ran up the beach with his board under one arm and the fish under the other, spectators looked on in awe.

“It was crazy, such a weird experience catching a fish like that,” he said.

“It was unbelievable and great that a few people were on the beach to see it all happen, that way people knew I wasn’t pulling their leg.”

A keen fisherman himself, the 22-year-old selflessly handed the fish over to his mate Trevor Sopovski who cooked it up for dinner that evening.