Thread: A Fiordland Charter.

We caught stacks of blue cod and a few Terikihi and then the cuda turned up, Nigel the skipper got a bit grumpy with the loss of taclkle and that was somehow our fault
First time I have heard the skipper blame the crew for catching cuda ...eventually we moved off far enough to get away from the snakes and then his demeanour improved....With a heap of fish to fillet we headed into some shelter and I got in for a dive.


I am pretty bloody unfit at the moment so my breath holds were non existant but there was no need to dive deep with what had to be 10m plus vis....it was simply the clearest salt water I have ever been in.
It didnt take long to spot my first cray as I swam around a virticlal rock wall there was one just sitting in the mouth of a crack about 2m deep, dam all I got was a handfull of feelers, another couple of meters and I spot another in the roof of a hole.I didnt think I would be able to get that one with my gasping so gout one of the pros over to have a go and he also ended up with only feelers.
heading around the rock wall there was quite a few different species of fish I had never seen before and a couple I had some literally only in a few 100mm of water hiding back in little holes,getting around into a bay the bottom came into veiw and some Kina barrens,The ones I could reach were bigger than my outstreached hand and the ones I could see down deeper were the size of large dinnerplates!
I cruised around in the shallows looking for crays and grabbed a pretty big one just sitting in the weed on a smooth bit of bottom in about 3m of water but she was in berry....goin a bit further another was spotted in only 2m and just like that I had my first takeable cray
150mm Paua in half a meter of water just sitting there in plain veiw, the water clarety was just amazing and I was poked,Good barstard Stingray had lent me some dive gear but my little chicken legs are not used to powering fins and his big barstards had my calves cramping in no time.




More to come