It’s fish for dinner across eastern Bay of Plenty tonight after a real estate agent reeled in a monster 82.2 kilogram bass off East Cape.

Aaron Standen was fishing in Hicks Bay yesterday when he hooked the whopper, taking about 30 minutes to reel it into Strictly Fishing, skippered by Coastal Fishing Charters’ Aaron Sargent.

A day later, the bass has been dispatched to homes across the area and Standen is cooking fish burgers for his kids and their friends tonight.

“Nothing’s going to waste. Friends and neighbours have come to get a cut. And friends, they’ve given some to their friends.

“There’s plenty to go around.”

The Harcourts Whakatāne sales consultant had even been able to find a home for the bass’ head and carcass, with someone he is selling a house for snapping it up for a feed.

Standen, a longtime keen fisher, has landed bigger fish before – including a 213kg blue marlin in 2002.

But the bass was the biggest he’d caught of its kind.

“It’s a pretty special fish. For me, it’s the bass of a lifetime.”

He didn’t know its age, but had removed the balance bones from its brain, which he hoped someone would be able to use to tell him how old it was.

The bass was only the third of its size which had been caught on a Coastal Fishing Charters’ outing in 15 years, Standen said.

Bass can grow to more than 100kg in weight and 2m in length, according to fishing.net.nz