I am a keen fisherman, so when the summer holidays came around I was very excited as I intended to go fishing quite frequently.
I watch a lot of NBA, so I thought of our holidays as more of an off season, in which we got a break from school, and a chance to relax and do what we want.
This article is just going to feature a few highlights of our success from this offseason.
I fished at a jetty in Bluff a few times with my grandpa, where we found that hundreds of small blue cod lived underneath the jetty that provided a source of food for bigger fish passing by, as well as the occasional stingray.
On one particular trip just before Christmas, I hooked into a beast of a fish which almost pulled my rod off the side of the jetty. The fish fought hard and turned out to be a 1.58 metre longfin eel, which was a big surprise. After we released it, we did some research, and it turned out that the longfin was on its way to Tonga to breed. Another highlight of the off-season was fishing in the Oreti River with my mate Logan, who happened to hook into a monster brown trout on a soft bait. After the fish was hooked, we tried desperately to land it, and it ended up snapping the line, but not before I got a hold on it. Logan was very pleased with his brown trout as it was over 60 cm. My favourite highlight of this offseason though, was using my Grandpa’s boat off Bluff, which was great fun.
The only way to become better at fishing is by experimenting different techniques and trying different spots.
We tried a number of spots and in some spots more fish were produced than others. We found that blue cod are pretty abundant where we were fishing in The Foveaux Strait, and that some spots produced a lot of Wwrasse which were a pain as they ate every bait. Barracuda and dogfish often appeared at some spots, which was cool as it showed that there were lots of species out there. One particular trip was windier than we would have liked, so we were forced to fish in a sheltered cove, where we stumbled across a school of kahawai. There were a few that were lost, although my Dad managed to land a 70 cm one which was pretty cool to see that there were big fish around.
All in all, it was a great off-season which showed us that there are lots of fish around and that lots of memories and experiences were made. I can’t wait till the next offseason!
