Oh dear there has been no cell coverage so you are going to get a whole bunch of these at the same time.
I like Houhoro harbour. We went ashore to have breakfast & buy bait. Since Ross & Mark left we have not really done much fishing. When we got back to boat I put out a line on the off-chance, tide was about half out and ripping through and we only have a couple of metres below our keel. Did something I’ve never done before, took most of drag off the reel, bungeed rod to lifelines and sat & read my book. Took a while, but a nice fat kahawai took the bait and I welcomed “supper” aboard. We iki fish as soon we get them on board and fillet & skin them pretty promptly to get them on ice as quickly as possible. Kahawai is one of my favourite eating fish but they do need be bled.
Thought there was no harm in trying my luck again – this time though, instead of reading I painted part of our bilges. And sure enough, no sooner than I am elbow deep in paint, my rod goes again. Rob lands another nice Kahawai. And I put bait out again. Before I even bungee rod a big stingray takes the bait. And he runs – takes damn near all my reel – and I haul him in and he runs. At one point I thought I’d lost him and got caught on bottom but I waited him out. Eventually I get him to side of boad and Rob gaffs him for me.
Rob tries hard to persuade me to let him go, but along with kahawai I think ray is a very under-rated fish so I want him. We get him onto swim platform, cut the barb off and haul him into cockpit. Ray weighs in at 17.5 kg. Sorry Doug, beats your 14kg one – you’ll have to come fishing again to beat mine.
Then the “fun” starts. I fillet Robs kahawai cut wings off ray which need to be skinned. But a couple of hours later we have 10-15 servings of ray in the freezer. This is all a very messy bloody business and whine in the process, Zinkwazi’s aft deck looks like a slaughter house.
So we have fresh tuna, ray & kawahai on board – guess what we are going to have for tea? Left-over meatloaf & macaroni cheese. After all the blood & gore I could not face fish for tea.
Tomorrow we head south – are going to leave early and head straight for Whangaroa (club night on Friday – need I say more?) where we will spend a few days.