Monday 28 April 2008

Sat 5th April

Spear Tackle
The plan was to head to Kai Iwa lakes but after chilling in the beautiful garden at the backpackers I found myself a little behind schedule. Slightly unenthusiastically I went to find Mike and Etienne who were supposed to be spearing a Kingfish. After scaling the headland in my jandals(NZ)/sandals(UK)/thongs(Oz) I found them plucking Kahawai out of the sea like there was no tomorrow.

In Despatches
It was a pretty sensational sight, I got involved and even a fishing retard like myself could pull out big hearty fish one after the other. We simply baited the line and cast it out where we could see tiddley fish jumping around. I'd real in my line until a Kahawai bit and suddenly it was Tight Lines o'clock. I caught my first 'proper' fish today and had the dubious please of 'dispatching' it. An old boy watching on wide-eyed informed me firmly that I couldn't just carry on fishing and let the Kahawai flip around til it died of natural causes. Nope, I had to stick my thumb in on side of it's gills and then two fingers in the other and rip and twist until lot of bleeding commenced, lovely.

A Fish Called Elvis
Anyways after some time Mike baited up a line with a pipe fish and lobbed it in the water, he instructed me, as the junior partner in this enterprise, to watch to see if the line started jumping about. As the very instructions were proceeding forth out of his mouth the line began moving as if it was possessed. Boom, game on! I'm going to but this yarn short but it took Mike an hour to haul in a 28lb (13kgs) Kingfish that was over a meter in length. This thing was a beauty and had put up a huge tug-o-war, dragging Mike into the water up to his neck. During this epic battle my role had changed from assistant line attendant to official Omapere Times photographer. The fish was finally gaffed (erm, stabbed with a hook on a stick in such a way that it's over-g'dovers for the incumbant) by Etienne and dragged out of the water onto the sany shore.

Chinese Takeaway
At this point a herd, nay a swarm, of our oriental cousins (who'd been watching the battle for a few minutes rocked on over and literally commandeered Elvis who wasn't even dead yet and got involved in all sorts of crazy poses as if they'd caught the damn thing meanwhile Mike who'd worn himself out athing the brute was as speachless as myself and Etienne at this downright rude behaviour. Cue rant: I don't care if it is their culture to photograph everything that lives, has lived or never lived, give the man a bit of space. The Dude was most perturbed and only just managed to abide. In future a 37.5mm will be deployed should Yoko Ono and her crew muscle in on someone else's moment of personal achievement. This was Mikes first ever Kingfish for goodness sake. After dispatching the beautiful specimen by a swift stab to the brain we hauled our sizable catch up to the cars and sure enough the boot was choc full of fish. We drove home and the lads scaled, gutted and sliced Elvis into steaks and to celebrate we treated the whole hostel to BBQ'd Kingfish steak and Kahawai fillets. Delicious, Ant, you missed a treat! On reflection this 'accidental' day (I wasn't even supposed to be in Omapere) was probably my best day so far, and it didn't cost a single penny either.

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