Autumn reds

A few hours wanderingabout a quiet Hauraki Gulf isle produced this and a handful of similar fish yesterday. All tricked with soft plastics languidly twitched and wound across a sandy bottom in just couple of hands past a fathom of sea, with Gulp curly tail jigging grubs on 1/4oz light bulbs being flavour of the day.

The first fish of the day taken from the top left point of this reef

                                            

A good string puller

Flying fish

For all those deniers who repeatedly and pig-headedly assert that fish aren't slippery in spite of the excellent scientific evidence proving the contrary, here's something that ought to change your mind.

Pike it or not

This shovel-headed croc was hanging around the weed like a skateboarder at a pot party. Every so often I'd see him chasing fish, but for a whole morning I couldn't get him on. I finally tried a flank bait, and he swallowed it like a <insert totally inappropriate comment of your choosing>. He went back in to do pike stuff, like eating ducklings and withdrawing from events at late notice and without giving concrete reasons.

When naming goes sucky

So you're sitting 'round, thinking about what you should call your boat. Several beers later, you settle on this, and paint it on before you sober up. Later, you realise you're a moron.

Brown in a crowd

This brown was holding in shallow, slow water, mooching back and forth along the weed edge like a homeless dude looking for fag ends. There were a number of rainbows in the same area, so pinpointing the brown was a bit like trying to score the pretty girl from amidst a milling bunch of other girls with really really great personalities.

Tackle maintenance

This is my good friend, legendary tackle-smith Ed Williams. He's demonstrating the correct way to use your downtime when the fish aren't biting. You'll notice the rollie ciggers, bottle of water, and loaf of bread, which are all used for different varieties of self gratification during the fishing day. Ed has carefully put his head on the cow track, so he is assured of being woken for the evening rise, when the cows move back into the holding paddock on dusk. It's this sort of attention to detail that's driven Ed to the shiny pinnacle of global fishing.

Vests are IN

This healthy back country rainbow was caught before hair cuts were invented, but slightly after the invention of naff fleecy vests. It was sitting in a fast riffle, nabbing food as it tumbled past, like a fat man on a steep hill at a picnic where people further up the hill have started rolling food past, maybe because they're bored, or maybe they're drunk or something. Further up the hill there was a course on how to write similes that aren't nonsensical - hell of a picnic, you would have loved it. Anyway, this rainbow came across about half a foot, nailed the hair and copper, and headed off through the rocks like he was some sort of weenie douche who'd just discovered JUSTIN FREAKING BEIBER tickets ARE LIKE TOTALLY ON SALE LOL OMG! This fish went back in unharmed, bearing no indelible scars, and slightly wiser, which is where the similarity to Bieber fans begins to fall down.

Bet on red

Every so often the fishing's so hot you could mistake it for Natalie Portman in her underwear. Anyway, that's not what this post is about, although it'd probably get a lot more hits if that was the topic, mainly from dudes who live in their mum's basement and can recite Monty Python while they clock Dungeons and Dragons. Big fan, Natalie, big fan. But back to the fishing: the snapper were high in the water that day, eating pilchards like they'd just discovered they were chocolate infused and gave you the power of invisibility. Everything that went down came back up replaced by a healthy red, except for the times a rambunctious kahawai exercised power of veto. These two fish were caught in successive casts, and came home to play a very key role in a fish dinner with an important guest of honour, my old mate Jimmy Five Bellies.

Autumn in the gulf

Being generous souls means occasionally we take others out to fulfil their snappery dreams, while it is sometimes said that charity helps the recipient with their problem (e.g., not catching any fish), but it doesn't do much to deal with the causes of that problem (e.g., being a ledger rigging shore googan). Fortunately Brendon proved to be quick study and in short order was deftly heaving pilchards about with reckless abandon. Unlike Schapelle Corby we actually deliver and Brendon soon found himself fighting this 64cm chap (a PB for Brendon) which engulfed a whole pilchard in 2 meters of water before promptly depositing himself in a weed line, but with some patience, good angling and smidgen of luck Brendan managed to extract him. On the walk back schools of Kawahai were herding bait fish into the bay so a quick, productive flick with trout spinners was in order.

Hopefully this kind of snapper action can persist through winter.