A huge leader prawn the size of a forearm and weighing 300 grams has been caught in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

A photo of the prawn sent to the ABC by Kai Thomas has generated plenty of interest on social media this week, with fishermen comparing their biggest catches.

Austral Fisheries northern division manager Andrew Prendergast said it was rare to catch a prawn weighing 300g.

"That's a pretty significant prawn," Mr Prendergast said

"They're not a target species of ours. We catch them incidentally and they're generally always bigger than the grooved or brown tigers."

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Mr Prendergast said he had never caught a prawn bigger than 300g, but he had seen one.

"I do remember seeing something in the Australian fish management fishing magazine about one that was caught in the gulf, just under 400g," he said.

Prawns good for eating

Leader prawns can be found on supermarket shelves or in fish markets across the country.

Mr Prendergast said the prawns tasted as good as the more popular tiger and banana prawn varieties.

"They're a hardy prawn so there's quite a strong tail. They're just as nice as any other prawn," he said.

"There's just a bit more of them. You might only need one or two on your plate, not half a dozen."

Primary use is for breeding

Wild-caught leader prawns are popularly used to facilitate breeding in commercial prawn farms.

Mr Prendergast said a breeding pair of leader prawns had the ability to produce about 1 million animals in a year-long cycle.

"Once they've gone through that one life cycle they become much less productive," he said.

"I believe it's the male that becomes much less potent and you only get 10,000 animals."

Mr Prendergast said while leaders were the prawn of choice in Australian aquaculture, most fishermen in the northern prawn fishery kept them for food rather than selling to farms.

"These have to be taken off live if they're broodstock, so that takes quite a bit of room," he said.

Mr Prendergast said boats in the northern prawn fishery would often go out with the sole purpose of trawling for commercial breeding leader prawns.