Top of the south forum fishing trip.

[gadgetman]

Fantastic weekend organised by @stingray again, supported by the rest of the Nelson crew. Good to catch up with some familiar faces, and meet some new ones.

We got away from town a little later than expected and hit some very slow traffic on the way up. Not sure, but I think I need a bigger trailer, big load with a 20kg yak on board. Stopped in Blenheim for fuel, pizza and bait.



Arrived about 11:45pm, unpacked enough stuff and hit the sack. Got up in the morning and put together the gear I wanted for the days outing. Wanted to test out the new yak and the cheap gadgetman long line special. Decided to go in full stealth mode, red long johns donned for warmth and weather protection.



I went for a solo mission in the yak. There was a bit of wind to contend with, rollers coming in from the north and a bit of chop from the east. Really happy with the boat speed and tracking from the wee thing. Managed a respectable average of 3.6mph (5.8km/h) for the 10km track I had planned to the area I wanted to have a look at. Considering I hadn't been out on the yak for a couple of years I was reasonably happy with that.



I pulled into a beach and chopped up some bait that had been too solid to cut earlier. I relaunched and successfully set the long line, though the wind didn't do me any favours. I started up wind from where I wanted to end up but it kept changing directions and blew me in a circle. Oh well, back out with the paddles and force the issue.

After a setting the line I went for a play and somehow managed to turtle. Quickly flipped the tub over and threw the couple of things back in that had floated off back into the tray before regaining my seat. Then I went and recovered the long line which had heaps of legal, but small, snapper nicely lip hooked. All successfully returned to grow a bit bigger. Then set off again for home base which produced the same speed, so seems a natural easy pace.

A look at the GPS log when I could see it properly said I'd covered 22km. Not too bad for someone only 21 and a bit that is out of shape and out of practice.

Great fun, and looking forward to next years event.