Flash ventures outdoors

Well, it's been quite some time since we've been fishing. Launching the boat without a car is reasonably tricky, and the weather hasn't been helping either.
Today was a fine day so we decided to head to Pakiri beach for a spot of land-based fishing. Not usually my fav form of fishing but beats sitting in front of a computer (writing blogs etc...)
This had nothing to do with me being jealous that everyone else is travelling around and I'm still here in NZ...

Low tide was at 12 noon so we got to the beach at about 11am (this had more to do with me sleeping in than the tides).
Pakiri beach is really beautiful (everywhere around here is beautiful).

Normally Pakiri is a surf beach but there was absolutely no surf today, it was flat as a pancake. There was a bit of wind blowing though (and a nice 'crisp' southerly at that) but otherwise it was a beautiful 'blue-dome' day.

Our fishing spot was about an hours walk from the car park. Along the way we discovered a really impressive bed of mussels!



Yum! Mussels!
It was pretty cool to see so many mussels growing this close to Auckland. Most mussel beds around here have been totally decimated.
We grabbed a few for bait and kept going.

Finally we got to spot-x.

A rather nice spot. The water drops to about 3 or 4 metres and today the visibility was really good. The best thing about land based fishing is being able to see all the fishies swimming around (before you catch them and drive a metal spike through their brains).

It didn't take long for the blue maomao to show up. Very pretty fish (and not target species so they were safe).

A little later we saw a John Dory. Now they are a target species!!
We didn't have any live bait so I did my best to make my bait look alive. Alas my puppetry skills just weren't up to the bar.
However a passing kahawai thought my efforts were worth rewarding and so I had my first fish for the day.

More attempts to catch the John Dory were fruitless so I went back to targetting snapper, which was just as well because a little later this guy turned up.


We estimated that he was 1.5 metres across (I thought 2 metres, Todd said 1.5). Very impressive!
Sting rays are hard enough to catch at the best of times, and this had to be the biggest one I'd ever seen (I didn't even know they got that big!) so there was no way I was going to try and catch it ( by 'catch' I of course mean 'lose all the fishing gear when it snaps the line').
So I went back to casting out for snapper, while Mr Stingy continued to patrol the coast.
It's no wonder we get Orca around here. Orca love to eat stingies.

On the next cast I got seriously snagged and in trying to get un-snagged I managed to snap Todd's fishing rod clean in half (I don't know my own strength!). After some rather panic'd casting with the other rod we managed to salvage the broken rod from the water, but it was totally munted. Theres no way we'll be able to fix it (not even with an ample supply of glue and nails).

We stayed there for another hour or so. Todd fished and I played with the berley (as you do when you no longer have a fishing rod). That wasn't too bad coz' it was a really beautiful spot. The JD turned up again and Todd had a go at luring it to eat a dead bait but it wasn't having any of it.
On the way back we collected a couple of dozen mussels for lunch. Mmmmm, smoked mussels in chilli sauce :)
I think we'll be going back there again :)