Peaceful Days

As those of you who follow my blog will no doubt know, we have had some rough times lately. Go & recap if you want to, I'll wait.... Back now ? Good. We had one of those absolutely wonderful days today. lately, we have been launching our boat at Waikawau as opposed to Te Puru. There are two reasons for this. One is that the ramp at Waikawau is more sheltered, being up a river & the ramp is accessible at all stages of the tide. Being in a river also makes it a lot easier for Jude to get in & out of the boat. The second reason is that the last time I used Te Puru I ripped a hole in the stern (since repaired) trying to get off the ramp in what wasn't really that much of a swell. Jude hasn't really got the strength in her arms to hold the boat steady in anything much past a flat calm these days.So we now use the Waikawau ramp.

The only problem is that its unfamiliar waters to us & we have burned a lot of fuel trying to find the fish. Today, we struck it lucky. We went out fishing today & took young Daniel from next door with us. He's a likeable young lad, very pleasant & polite, well brought up & very eager to be of whatever help he can, which today was quite substantial. having thought about the fish thing for a while, we decided that instead of heading towards Coromandel & trying to find fish among the mussel farms & the myriad of islands, we would head slightly back towards Thames & try the same deep water channel that we have so much success in from Te Puru.

It was a good call. The fish were biting 5 minutes after we dropped the anchor & never really stopped untill we had our limit, 27 fish, some of them a fairly respectable size. this is our days catch in a standard fish bin..

Not a bad haul huh ? By the time we had given one or two away & saved the two biggest ones for the smoker in the morning, we finished up with 5.5 kg's of boneless fillets. That sort of fish currently retails at round $30.00 a kilo in the shops here.

Aside from a superb catch, we had the thrill of seeing about a 10 foot long Hammerhead shark cruise past the boat about 2 foot under the water. It really is quite a thrill to see a prehistoric beast like that glide past nearly close enough to touch. it looked for all the world like a cross between a nuclear submarine & the Star Ship Enterprise. Awesome. The other nice thing was Jude getting the fish of the day. here she is, bless her, straining like anything to hold up a 5 & a half pound snapper that she caught..

A day like today ???????? Priceless.... Totally & utterly priceless.....