Around midwinter, my partner Janelle, myself, and our good friend Barry headed out to d’Urville Island for the Ferrymead Fishing Club’s annual excursion. This was our third time and we were excited to show off our new and improved Seahouse 6.4m to the seven other boats full of keen fishermen. And it didn’t disappoint, running beautifully the whole trip.
We set up at around 50m in hopes bringing in some kingies. This would be a new notch on the rod for Janelle. I was fishing with 300gram Black Magic jigs (blue and white) and (pink and blue), on a Daiwa Saltiga 500Ltd reel and a Crucis Hoodlum rod, which proved to be an awesome setup for fighting the kingfish. Barry used a Penn rod and reel.
Catching kingies is something else. They’re powerful and strong, and reeling them in is a guaranteed work out; you can feel each of your muscles being used. It’s exciting.
Janelle did end up catching her first kingi and it was the biggest, weighing in at 11 kg. In fact, she out fished us all week, both in size and variety: snapper, blue cod, conger eel, greyboy, tarakihi and perch. Us boys, well we caught some too… just on a smaller scale. Our kingies were both around 10.5kg.
This isn’t an uncommon thing, Janelle is always outfishing the men. She doesn’t like jigs and only uses fresh bait and I’m starting to think I should follow her lead. She’s an eager fisherwoman who insists on doing everything herself, including learning filleting.
All up it was an amazing trip and we’re all looking forward to next year’s.
