KAIKOURA SMALL BOAT TRIP
November 24th 2007
As ‘Downtime' slid off the trailer into the calm Kaikoura water, Sarah eased her over to the wharf to pick up the crew. Stu, Pauline, Ange, Sean & I eagerly clambered aboard. Kaikoura had turned on some mint weather for us with a warm, still, sunny morning. We buddied up while steaming across South Bay and before long pulled up near Panau Island. Peering at the sounder we all agreed it looked like cray country!
Ange, Sean & Stu were first to the bottom. What seem like hours later (due to my own enthusiasm) Ange and Sean surfaced, followed shortly by Stu. Ang let out a woo hoo! She had obviously caught her first cray.
Like a fat kid at a lolly scramble I suited up. Sarah and I hit the bottom and started hunting. It didn't take long before we were both snatching furiously under rocks and between cracks trying to stuff as many bugs into our bags as we could. In no time I'd guttsed a whole tank of air and surfaced.
After measuring our catch we were a little disappointed to find most were just undersize. Never mind, still a few keepers and one I had caught happened to be the biggest on the boat! We decided to head a little closer to shore for our second dive. Once again Stu, Sean and Sarah surfaced with loaded catch bags, and once again most were returned to grow a little bigger.
Ange and I were next in. We hit the bottom and began hunting. The fish life was prevalent and so were the crays, in fact we found one large crack with wall to wall crays, there were crays on top of crays! After searching under another likely looking rock I turned to look for Ange and was greeted by a dolphin zooming past. The little guy wasn't interested in assisting me in my cray searching and continued on his way. Once again I was forced to surface by the now very limited availability of air.
A southerly breeze had picked up so a quick fish was planned. We drifted around trying to pick up a feed but you could say the fishing was quiet. I still managed to catch a respectable blue cod and a few smaller ones were also returned to the sea. With the lack of action we decided to call it a day and ‘Downtime' raced us back to the wharf. I politely reminded Stu that it appeared I had the largest cray and the largest blue cod in the fish bin. He suggested as a prize for my efforts...... I should write the trip report for the club news letter, cheers Stu.
Bevan
