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This is a dominantly olive greenish fish, shading to white below. Freshly caught specimens are beautifully tinted with bluish purple, this colour fading rapidly after death. The body has a rather speckled appearance due to the dark based scales; the olive green dorsal fin is bordered with lavender, and has a series of black blotches towards its base.
The deeply forked caudal fin is golden olive. The Green Job fish is taken by reef fishermen along the whole oft he Queensland coastline; it will rise to a trolled bait or lure intended for Mackerel. and will take a floating bait put out for Snapper on our more southerly reefs, such as those off Cape Moreton.
It is a heavy shouldered and hard fighting fish reaching a length of 1 m (40 inches) and a weight of 13 kg (28 lb.), and is highly regarded as a food fish. Quite apart from its dissimilar coloration. it is readily separable from the allied Rosy Job fish in that the pectoral fin is quite small, being lesser than the ventral fin. and in the presence of large. conspicuous conical teeth along the outer margin of the jaw.
It is probably only a matter of confused identification that this Job fish is also called King Snapper, on the popular belief that it travels with and leads every shoal of Snapper.
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