Fishing

On Saturday Jenni went into town on her own and I went fishing in the Kaipara Harbour with a couple of guys that I work with and some of their friends and neighbors. The Kaipara Harbour is a large harbor with lots of bays and inlets that extend inland. When we were staying near Ruawai we visited Pouto Point which is on the north side of the entrance to the harbor. From there we could see South Head quite clearly as it was less than 10km (6 miles) across the harbor, but to drive from Pouto Point to South Head takes over 3.5 hours and covers 263km (163 miles) due to all of the estuaries that you have to drive around. The Kaipara Harbour almost splits Northland (the very northern tip of the North Island) off from the rest of the North Island. To enter the harbor you must come in from the Tasman Sea on the west side of the island and the harbor comes within 10km (6 miles) of the Pacific Ocean on the east side of the island.

There were a total of twelve people on the boat including the skipper. We met the boat at the Shelly Beach pier in the southern part of the harbor at 9:30am and were dropped off at the pier around 7:00pm that evening. The day was spent motoring around the harbor trying to find fish. Within the last week the water has started to cool off which means that the fish are not biting as much as they do during the summer. A few of the popular fishing areas within the harbor have colorful names including the bombing range and the graveyard. The bombing range is close to South Head and got its name because it is near where the New Zealand military has done some of their training. The graveyard is close to the north side of the entrance to the harbor and got its name because more ships have wrecked there than any other place in New Zealand. We did not have very much luck fishing in either place, but fortunately the skipper had a few of his own secret spots where we were able to catch fish. I ended up catching a few kahawai, three snapper of legal size, a large number of snapper that were too small to keep and a stargazer. The stargazer is a bottom fish that has a pretty name for being such an ugly fish and was fun to catch only because no one on the boat (except the skipper) had seen one before. The more common bottom fish to catch is the gurnard and a number of them were caught as well as two sharks. On Sunday night we ate the four fish that I brought back with me. Fortunately the stargazer tasted much better than it looked.