Who cares?

Hunting flighting geese on a full moon is a high risk punt at the best of times. With no weather to speak of, just an unmovable high pressure we knew were were up against it element-wise. But damn, I needed to hunt, and so did Matt & Andy. We had Eddie along as well, for his first taste of goosing. In my Friday night anxiety to leave the city I got away too early and got caught in the tail of the traffic; not exactly gridlock but it did add 45 minutes to the travel time. The Chiefs Vs. Crusaders match was at the half way stage by the time I got to Andy & Christa’s place; and almost completely finished by the time I’d grassed my blind. We headed down to pick up Eddie, then went out to scout the geese and set the decoys. It was cold… barely 3 degrees. We headed for a peninsular and there were geese everywhere on the mud and harbour around us. They didn’t seem to be scarpering so we had reasonable hopes that we’d get a fly by.

Next morning we met Matt at the farm gate and set out to put out his dekes. Then we lay back in our blinds waiting and waiting…. and waiting. We were visited by a pair of paradise ducks who sat in our spread 5 metres behind us making parrie noises, and were there for at least 20 minutes before they took to the air. A harrier hawk came over 30 yards up and didn’t bat an eyelid, so our camo passed inspection! A brace of pheasant played around in a paddock several hundred yards away. But not one goose came passed. Even the ones honking behind us moved quietly away. At one point a farmer several km’s away put up a small flock, but they flew away from us. And that was it, as we said to Eddie the time spent lying around waiting is made up for when even just one goose sets its wings and comes in. So we called it a day early and went out to stalk some geese that Eddie knew about… but the geese knew about us too and disappeared well out of range. We parted ways and then moved on to part 2 of our mission, to burley up and catch a silver trivially on fly.

What a stunning day to be out on the water! We anchored Andy’s boat in several metres of water and deployed burley. I rigged the old Scott S3S #10 (overkill? Yes…) and began casting. Several hours and a multitude of very small kahawai later and our burley was depleted… no sign of Mr. trev…. However it was nice to be casting again after such a long time. A 0 or 1 weight would have been better suited to the catch, but you never know what might swim past… after that we decided to have a nosey around and see if we could find the geese. In one small bay we found 100+ birds and they took to the air, heading towards where we’d been set up in the morning…

Another fantastic day. Not much to show for it in terms of catch or kill, but who cares?