A Break from Thailand - Kaipara Fishing Trip

I thought I'd take a break from my Thailand adventures to tell you about a fantastic New Zealand one. A couple of weeks ago Coastguard organised a fishing trip on the Kaipara Harbour. The harbour is situated on the northwestern side of the North Island, and is just over an hour from Auckland. It is one of the largest harbours in the world, and apparently the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere - it's roughly 40 miles from north to south! 

We all met up in a small place called Helensville, situated at the southern end of the harbour, and climbed aboard our vessel - The Lady Frances. Our skipper for the day was a guy called Rod, and he had Stewie on board as his First Mate. They were just like you imagine a couple of salty old sea dogs to look like! Rod must have been in his 60s, wearing a knitted jumper and very baggy jeans, and he also had a huge white beard. Kind of like Captain Birdseye, only much thinner! Stewie chain-smoked his way through the trip and had also chosen a knitted jumper and jeans (which were very dirty and full of holes!). They were very nice though and knew the harbour, and all the buoys and markers, like the backs of their hands. Some of the things they pointed out weren't on the charts that we use, so it was a good learning experience.

From Helensville to our first fishing stop took around 45 minutes, and on the way we saw a colony of seals. There were some very cute baby ones, and a few adults too. Rod knew exactly where they would be and steered the boat near to the rocks so we could have a good look and take some photographs. We then carried on to our first stop which was just inside the harbour with an excellent view of the Tasman Sea beyond. The fishing here was ok, just a little slow. I think between the 16 of us we caught 5 fish in an hour. Geoff is pictured below with the boat's first fish - a Kahawai.

After a disappointing first stop, we decided to head out to the Tasman Sea.  To get from the harbour to the open ocean, we had to cross the infamous Kaipara Bar. The bar is the stretch of water between the headlands, and is notorious for huge waves and strong currents. It's extremely dangerous in bad weather, but fortunately for us, it was calm and sunny. It was so calm and warm in fact that I managed to fall asleep - apparently not an easy feat on a bar crossing!

Once we had arrived at our second and final location, we only had to wait for a few minutes before all hell broke loose! We were just reeling the fish in one after the other after the other. There were times where our lines didn't even have time to reach the sea floor before there were fish on the hooks - I must have landed around 15-20 fish just on my own. At some points we were even catching two at a time! The fish were mainly Snapper, but we also got some Trevally, Kahawai and Gurnard. I think the last two pictures in the sequence below are a very good representation of our fishing trip!

My personal success was catching one of the largest fish of the entire trip - a HUGE Snapper I decided to call Hamish. Even Rod wanted to get in the photograph of myself with Hamish (I hope you see what I mean by Captain Birdseye now!). Unfortunately for Hamish, although I'm sure he enjoyed the ride in the car, he did not seem to happy about the trip to the frying pan. He was absolutely delicious though and served me for two meals. His friends are now all snuggled up enjoying the inside of my freezer, and will meet the frying pan soon!

I really enjoyed my first fishing experience in New Zealand, and can't wait to go again. Hopefully the next trip will be as successful as this one was!