Decided to head back to the homeland and catch up with family and friends over the summer break. It's always hard to get out for a fish or dive because catching up with people normally sucks up most of the time spent on holiday. Being a long stay this time round, there was definitely going to be a few trips out no matter what the outcome.

After a weekend of drinking (due to a wedding and family reunion), decided to head out to the country and kick back away from the hustle and bustle and catch up on some well earned sleep. Had a few quiet beers the next afternoon and then started chatting to my mate Steve about the fishing in the area. He assured me there were endless amounts of snapper in the vicinity, which got my attention real quick!!! So, we started to hatch a plan to hit the water the next day and have a crack at these snapper in big numbers.

After a quick phone call to make sure Steve had the next day off work, the wheels were in motion. We had a look at the weather forecast for the next day which was telling us maximum 15 knots (game on). We headed out to the shed where the boat was parked and started making up a heap of rigs and getting the gear ready for the next day. Our partners decided they weren't going to miss out on all the fun, so they wanted in on the action. There were now four of us going out to enjoy the fishing bonanza.

We got up early the next morning to find mint conditions for fishing, better than expected. We roused the kids up to get ready for school and childcare. Steve and I headed off with the 4wd and boat and the women with the kids in the car, where they would meet us at a pickup point. On the way we picked up a bit of tackle and a box of ice ($5 a bin - cheap as) as well as the bait. An old Maori man was smoking a heap of fish outside the fish shop, which was well worth a peep and bit of a sniff of the aroma's oozing out the smoke shed.

We picked the girls up and launched the boat almost immediately. Being a weekday there were only a handful of cars at the ramp so there wasn't any congestion with boats, going by the perfect conditions for fishing. We only had to head out about a kilometre off the coast, as we would be fishing around the mussel beds. We found a mussel harvesting vessel pulling up a string, so we moved in to tie off the end buoy and be in line of their burley trail.

We baited up the rigs and all four of us dropped lines around the same time. Almost straight away we were getting bites, that's when all the chaos started. The first fish pulled in the boat was thrown back, as Steve is superstitious that putting the first fish back won't bring any bad luck, and boy was he right. After catching a couple of nice snapper I decided to sit back a bit and let the girls have a good crack. They were screaming with joy as they were pulling some healthy fish from the drink. Blokes from boats nearby were giving them death stares, as they weren't having much luck where they had anchored. Almost on every drop a snapper was landed which made it easier to release fish that were size and target the bigger ones.

The bag limit per person over here is 9 snapper, and the way we were going that target was going to be a breeze. After about 2 hours we had our limit of 36 snapper. In total we probably would have boated at least 60, as we had released a lot of the smaller ones. All nearby boats around us looked as though they had reached their quota's, as they had headed back to the ramp early. I have never seen snapper in such big numbers and apparently this is the norm for the locals living in the area. 

After an awesome day of fishing it was home to clean the boat and fillet the snapper. I managed to fillet, skin and bone most of the fish in under an hour and half which wasn't too bad, considering the number we had caught. A lot of the fish were given away to family and friends and the rest will be used around the chrissy break. We all had a magic day out and I look forward to the next trip while over here on holiday :)  

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