Deejay2400
06-11-2008, 03:25 AM
Here I was sitting in the Devil’s waiting room with a ticket in my hand waiting for my number to be called when I thought ‘beggar this for a joke’ I’m going fishing.
Truth of the matter was that a couple or more doctors had suggested that I shouldn’t make too many long term commitments because I have about as much hope of meeting them as Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in the movie The Bucket List.
It was time to make up my own bucket list and what better way to start it than by going fishing.
So Bucket List Fishing 101 was formed; a suitable logo designed, polo shirts were printed and a trip was made down to the local BCF store to stock up on tackle.
My aim is to catch 101 different varieties of fish in the coming months and I will go anywhere and everywhere I can to do so.
BLF 101 commenced on October 27 with a charter on the M.V.Whai out of Whitianga on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula. The target species was snapper and the bigger the better.
Skipper John Ellwood knows more about snapper than just about anyone I know and has a 35 pounder mounted on his wall at home to prove it.
The Whai is a hardy old steel cat that has been in the Ellwood family for 30 years and still runs like a dream. It’s capable of sleeping 10 fishermen and John but this time there were just seven of us.
We left harbour at 4pm hoping for a dusk fish and to get at least enough for a feed that night. We had other rations if we didn’t but John put us on to a few good size kelpies and by dark we had half a dozen legal snapper in the bin and had thrown back a good size skate that had given me some curry for awhile.
The Kiwi weather remained kind to us as we cruised around the Mercury Island Group and cast lines into what Queenslanders such as myself consider really shallow water (15 to 20 metres). My first fish of the day was a 3kg snapper caught on a nuclear chicken soft plastic – my first decent fish on a plastic.
Down the back of the boat the boys were starting to pull in some good eating sized hapuka – a bit of a surprise in such shallow water. But the fun was soon interrupted by barracuda that attacked everything we put into the water and became expensive pests shredding plastics.
An hour before dusk we pulled into a small bay and anchored a couple of hundred metres off shore. The moment the baits hit the water we were on. The next hour was one of the hottest snapper sessions I’ve had and by the end of it we had bagged 40 snapper of between 3kg and 6kg. They were still biting well after dark, but what made it even more stunning is that we were fishing in less than 10 metres of water.
We moved further down the shoreline of Great Mercury Island to anchor up for the night and spent a fruitful hour or so catching big calamari. Those large squid heads made ideal bait the following day.
Ironically, the first thing to take my line in the morning was an octopus which provided us with plenty of interesting moments over the next couple of hours. Apart from chasing it around the bait bin and having to foil its many attempts at escape, it provided us with an interesting live bait and snapper don’t seem to be able to resist.
Try cutting a tentacle off a live occie and you’ll find it still has plenty of movement in it – enough to attract a six kilo plus snapper to one of the guy’s 10lb outfit. It was a memorable fight and one you can see at
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ7YxhJfS5w (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=2kV1CzKpv0s)
You can also see my 5.75kg catch at
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=sf-L8jAsCvA (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=sf-L8jAsCvA)
The food on board was getting better and the skipper soon added to it with a bounty of fresh cray so our final night on board started with an entree of kahawai (Australian salmon) marinated in soy and ginger and cooked on the bbq; fresh strips of fried calamari, crayfish and snapper done in sweet chilli and mango.
The quest for 101 is underway. In December I’m heading to Bamaga to join Greg Bethune on a 7 day charter out to the reef where he tells me there are more than 50 species I can catch. I plan to get as many of my catches as possible on video and post them to You Tube so anyone who is interested can follow my progress.
I’m open to suggestions – and invitations – on how to reach the target of 101 and I’m game for just about anything...Deejay 2400.:dankk2:
Ps: If you want to organise a charter on the Whai go to
www.marineadventures.co.nz (http://www.marineadventures.co.nz/) or call John on +6478662229 or +64274768171
Truth of the matter was that a couple or more doctors had suggested that I shouldn’t make too many long term commitments because I have about as much hope of meeting them as Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in the movie The Bucket List.
It was time to make up my own bucket list and what better way to start it than by going fishing.
So Bucket List Fishing 101 was formed; a suitable logo designed, polo shirts were printed and a trip was made down to the local BCF store to stock up on tackle.
My aim is to catch 101 different varieties of fish in the coming months and I will go anywhere and everywhere I can to do so.
BLF 101 commenced on October 27 with a charter on the M.V.Whai out of Whitianga on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula. The target species was snapper and the bigger the better.
Skipper John Ellwood knows more about snapper than just about anyone I know and has a 35 pounder mounted on his wall at home to prove it.
The Whai is a hardy old steel cat that has been in the Ellwood family for 30 years and still runs like a dream. It’s capable of sleeping 10 fishermen and John but this time there were just seven of us.
We left harbour at 4pm hoping for a dusk fish and to get at least enough for a feed that night. We had other rations if we didn’t but John put us on to a few good size kelpies and by dark we had half a dozen legal snapper in the bin and had thrown back a good size skate that had given me some curry for awhile.
The Kiwi weather remained kind to us as we cruised around the Mercury Island Group and cast lines into what Queenslanders such as myself consider really shallow water (15 to 20 metres). My first fish of the day was a 3kg snapper caught on a nuclear chicken soft plastic – my first decent fish on a plastic.
Down the back of the boat the boys were starting to pull in some good eating sized hapuka – a bit of a surprise in such shallow water. But the fun was soon interrupted by barracuda that attacked everything we put into the water and became expensive pests shredding plastics.
An hour before dusk we pulled into a small bay and anchored a couple of hundred metres off shore. The moment the baits hit the water we were on. The next hour was one of the hottest snapper sessions I’ve had and by the end of it we had bagged 40 snapper of between 3kg and 6kg. They were still biting well after dark, but what made it even more stunning is that we were fishing in less than 10 metres of water.
We moved further down the shoreline of Great Mercury Island to anchor up for the night and spent a fruitful hour or so catching big calamari. Those large squid heads made ideal bait the following day.
Ironically, the first thing to take my line in the morning was an octopus which provided us with plenty of interesting moments over the next couple of hours. Apart from chasing it around the bait bin and having to foil its many attempts at escape, it provided us with an interesting live bait and snapper don’t seem to be able to resist.
Try cutting a tentacle off a live occie and you’ll find it still has plenty of movement in it – enough to attract a six kilo plus snapper to one of the guy’s 10lb outfit. It was a memorable fight and one you can see at
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ7YxhJfS5w (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=2kV1CzKpv0s)
You can also see my 5.75kg catch at
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=sf-L8jAsCvA (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=sf-L8jAsCvA)
The food on board was getting better and the skipper soon added to it with a bounty of fresh cray so our final night on board started with an entree of kahawai (Australian salmon) marinated in soy and ginger and cooked on the bbq; fresh strips of fried calamari, crayfish and snapper done in sweet chilli and mango.
The quest for 101 is underway. In December I’m heading to Bamaga to join Greg Bethune on a 7 day charter out to the reef where he tells me there are more than 50 species I can catch. I plan to get as many of my catches as possible on video and post them to You Tube so anyone who is interested can follow my progress.
I’m open to suggestions – and invitations – on how to reach the target of 101 and I’m game for just about anything...Deejay 2400.:dankk2:
Ps: If you want to organise a charter on the Whai go to
www.marineadventures.co.nz (http://www.marineadventures.co.nz/) or call John on +6478662229 or +64274768171