Well bugger me I'm off the tank and back snorkling (free diving for you young bloods)..after putting the young guys onto a couple of me yester year spots and seeing their results I have invested in 5 mill wettie, taken 8 kg of me weight belt and brought a snorkel.
So as fate would have it I got loaded into a ute with 4 other lanky hardcase young fella's and 4.30am on a sat morning we set sail for the coast. Road trip!! So as I was rideing shotgun I broke out some cat stevens , dire straights and a bit of ozzy to pass the time.. we yarned lied and bull shitted our way down to try out some of their spots.
Well we arrive to find about a meter swell running and a full tide...next thing I know these lads are in wetsuits geared up and gone.. 5 mins later there's a whoop and hell yeah as the first cray is tagged and bagged.Better get amongst it I decide so I geard up and jumped in.
Now if the truth be told I haven't snorkled hard out for 20 years so the first hour had me buggered and as I finned in to have a break I saw a rock and a crack runing down the side of it so I dropped down and well well a cray.. grab stuff and surface!! "phew" back down whip off a couple of paua and i'm done.
So I'm sitting in the sun feeling like the cat that stole the cream when my lad comes in to check on the old fella "to make sure he's not having a turn"(cheeky liittle shit) opens the chilly bin to see me cray and paua.. gives me a punch in the shoulder and one of his easy grins "bloody hell dad he says take you to my secret spot and your thrashing it"...
This was a start to two days that I will tresure and I will never forget.. we changed spots tried here there and yarned with the locals. day one concluded with us having spent 6 hours in the water, and between 5 of us we had 19 crays and 22 paua (we could of had our limit of both). So fish n chips for tea and three beers for me and it was in to me scratcher and lights out.
Day2 .. up at 7 cooked the young folk scrambled eggs toast and spaggetti the back into wet wetsuits and back into the water.. by now I was hitting my stride.I was relaxing controlling my breathing and extending my bottom time. The vis had improved over night so I could now choose which rocks to dive and hunt the better turf.
We tried a new spot amongst the seals with mixed results curly speared a great butter and the big fella (he's a monster) bagged the best cray of the weekend 3.5lb me I mucked about but only bagged one good paua.Maf stopped for a yarn and a look so once we'd chew'd the fat with them we were off again, down the coast to try to find a super secrect spot (so secrect no of us new it). The young blokes are mad keen so it's just a point and jump decsion, so in we plowed again with the tide dropping the young folk headed for deeper water, me I knew the crays were shallow so why go deeper (cunning old barsatrd eh).. did an hour at this (our new favorite spot). the old fart had 5 crays in the sack , and 6 great paua.. that was me i was buggered.
So I dragged my sorry arse up a rock like and old seal and sat in the sun taking in what was an amazing weekend. We called it a day after that dive with a total of 29 crays and 40 paua for the weekend. The young folk drove me home and were even good enough to drink my beer whist we cooked the crays at my place bless em.
The next day i got a phone call that my aunt has passed ... Life can be short live it well eh.
Cheers Joe.
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