November has rolled around & it’s time for another Dawnbreakers Fishing Club trip to Pohara. This is a popular fixture in the club’s calendar and is a great opportunity to get away with likeminded folks.
We arrived mid-afternoon on Friday, a quick unpack and then a catch up with an end of week drink, meeting across the road at Molly B’s for a fantastic meal followed by a makeshift fishing quiz created by yours truly. There was a little dissension in the ranks over my question regarding the Australian name for kahawai, resulting in a brief discussion on the merits of believing Wikipedia over Google!
Saturday saw most of our attending members heading out for a quick fish before the weather window closed. Not an overly successful session for most, but there were still a few nice fish brought home including a very nice 19lb Snapper.
With most fishers back by lunchtime, nearly everyone made it to Anatoki Salmon. A beautiful setting, on a cracking sunny afternoon, it’s not a bad place to spend an hour or so (it can take that long if the Salmon aren’t interested in your casting technique). The Bell boys arrived about half an hour after we started, five minutes later they had both landed fish!! And those who had beaten us there that morning had great success too in fairly brief time (resulting in the winning largest salmon for our mini competition over the weekend) – the ponds were well stocked!
We certainly weren’t in a rush and perhaps the fish weren’t too hungry, but around 45 minutes after we started, we had our fish in the bin. I felt a little nostalgic as we hadn’t been to Anatoki for around 18 years, since our eldest caught his first fish, in pretty much the same spot as my wife Catherine caught her first Salmon this trip. The fact that it was considerably bigger than mine wasn’t mentioned again for the rest of the weekend – yeah right!!
The café at Anatoki then provided the setting for a coffee/cold beverage & chat while our fish was getting smoked. My advice would be if you want to take ANY fish home, don’t try it when the box arrives at your table, once you start its very hard to stop.
Back to the Top Ten campground, Nana-nap time, unfortunately this almost made us late for the BBQ tea and prize-giving – oops! Hard work this relaxing in the sun business! And lets not forget I’d been up and out early fishing.
Salads & sides from the members and a delicious selection of meat from Harris Farms & Wakefield Four Square had everyone happily fed.
Some great prizes awarded for the fish caught, and heap of spot prizes and a Bugga award handed out, this gave most of us a memento of the weekend. Looking forward to the next one.
The Dawnbreaker’s
Fishing Club is a great social, family focused club, that holds social days every month with 2-3 away trips a season. If you are interested in joining us – get in touch.
Phil Chilton
President
