During the spring, my mate Andrew took me fishing out near Kapiti Island to catch a decent feed for our family’s dinners. The morning was cold, but it was sunny and the sea was flat. We launched from the beach at Paraparaumu, just out front of the Kapiti Boat Club. Being a beach launch, it required some extra effort.
We unhooked the trailer and pushed the boat out by hand, just over the first sand bar, then dragged the trailer back to the ute. While Andrew took the trailer up near the sand dunes, I managed to turn the boat around into deeper water. Soon Andrew was back and we were ready for our fishing expedition, setting course towards Kapiti Island.
At first the fishing was unbalanced, with an abundance of kahawai caught and released, it was hard to get through to the reef where the better species hunt. Not for lack of trying, we had berley and strayline rigs, ledger rigs baited and little flutter jigs too.
Eventually, the kahawai stopped biting and the current picked up, moving the baits around to look livelier.
Looking at the sounder, we noticed some activity coming under the boat, hard down on the reef. Quickly winding my ledger rig up and sending it back down with baits (squid and pillie) I managed to hook something instantly. The fight was on.
It was a great fight. I had the drag set low, trying to play the fish to the surface and off it went, down a couple metres then back up again. When it got close enough, I called for Andrew to get the net and, with some impressive net skills, he pulled the net and fish over the gunwales. To my and Andrew’s surprise, it was a 7.2 kg blue warehou. These are very slimy; you could see the slime on this one dripping through the net.
Andrew had never caught one before and the look of excitement on his face, slime covering his boat, was priceless. He wasted no time dropping his line back down and managed to catch his first blue warehou.
It was a great morning of fishing, bringing home an awesome tasting fish for the family’s dinner.
It’s not often I catch blue warehou down on the reef, but I won’t complain.
Thanks, Andrew, for a spectacular day fishing!
