Doing more stuff in aid of shooting more stuff...

I've been off work since Dec 23, which seems just a distant memory. This is my brownie point earning time of the year, a couple of weeks with the family with the odd trip thrown in to keep it interesting. At both Tui Ridge and Craig's place we had pheasant pens in needs of modification, so I headed down country for a couple of days.

The issue with our rearing pen at Craig's is that it's difficult to herd the birds when they are very young - at that stage they have no life skills whatsoever and are the mercy of weather as well as predators. We'd lost a bunch on Xmas Eve due to a sudden downpour - they huddled in a corner rather than getting undercover so the ones that weren't smothered were killed by exposure. When I arrived at Craig's we sat and yakked over a cuppa and he gave me his thoughts - we'd put in a corridor extension around the northern end of the pen, where the birds can be released into as chicks. Thus they can be rounded up in the narrow corridor and herded with ease.

Birds in the main pen

Our job was to put in the posts. Given the ground was studded with rotten rock as well as rocks as hard as iron we couldn't use the tractor with rammer to knock the poles in. *sigh*. Spade, crowbar (to break rocks) and rammer it was. Craig is pretty much a world class fence post hole digger, and his modified long handled spade put my little garden spade to shame. So he excavated while I broke rocks with the bar and rammed around the poles.

By lunchtime we had 2 of the three sides done. A couple of cold beers with a lunch of fresh rolls and smoked snapper and kingfish made returning to the task a bit difficult, especially as along the eastern edge the ground is pretty shitty with buried obstacles. So the final 3 holes took a bit of effort but finally we were there.

Note Craig's modified spade front right

Back to base for a cuppa and a quick look at the cricket (doh!) before we moved the cows around to a fresh paddock. We scoped out a few likely spots for pond development (time & money!) then headed back to the house. After dinner we decided to go and look for a pig. The wind was a stiff westerly up the valley from the sea, and with overcast but no rain it was an ideal evening to be out. We drove to the drop off then walked in on the baits before heading south to a ridge overlooking the valley to the south, and the sea to the west. The view was stunning and we pretty much sat and said very little for an hour. As the light began to fade we headed back over the ridge when Craig spotted a ginger pig about 600m away. I loaded the rifle and we stalked in. The pig was feeding toward us and with a strong wind blowing away from him we had no trouble getting in close. I took the shot head on and drilled him between the eyes and he dropped like a sack of poo. On inspection he turned out to be a young and very fat boar, an ideal eater. Craig gutted him and then I carried him back to the car and propped him on the bull bars for the ride home. A few photos and we hung him to cool overnight.

Next morning we skinned and broke him in half to go in my 60l chilli bin - he only just fit.

I left Craig ruminating on his upcoming trip to Kyrgyzstan where he hopes to hunt for Ibex and headed north to Tui Ridge.

The recently constructed pen needs a few finishing touches and my job was to peg down the netting around the pen, involving hammering in some 300+ pegs. I have to say that it was quite enjoyable doing such a menial task in the sun with my iPod plugged in my ears; and I was done within a couple of hours.

Back home for some butchery - sausages here we come!

Being guided

Being guided involves being able to take instructions from one who knows, and acting on them in the way the one who knows instructs.

(Wee aside - some people claim to be guided by little voices from the heavens. Noted for observing such phenomenon are Moses, Charles Mason and Rev. Brian Tamaki. If you HAD to choose one of these guys as an angling partner, who would you go for?)

I've really enjoyed the few occasions where I've employed a guide. They've put me onto fish and methods to catch them quite fast. Once they figure out that you can cast where they say to, can drift or work a fly where you need to, and can deal with a fish once hooked they visibly relax. As a guide though, I'm a fabulous astronaut. I once helped a guide mate out with a couple of anglers on a trout stream, both who claimed to be world class anglers. Neither could cast worth a damn, and they put fish after fish down with needless false casting, poor presentation and it was becoming my fault! I actually ended up grabbing the rod off one of them, casting to a rising fish, hooking it and handing the rod back. Ooops.

So when I got a text from Rudy, an angling guest from the Sth Island, who put disclaimers all over his ability to cast from land let alone a boat I relaxed straight away. This was a good sign! He couldn't lay out 50 m casts into the wind!

As I'd invited Rudy fishing, I wasn't so much guiding him as putting him in the way of kingfish in the best way I knew how, and I'm in holiday mode anyhow so the only anxiety I had was the wind. (Nah, I really do feel a bit anxious to put guests onto fish). The wind forecast had been changed 4 times over 12 hours on PredictWind so the only good news on that front was at least wind and tide would travel together so we'd be able to hold fine on the markers in the NW on the incoming tide. I arrived at torpedo Bay at 5.45 to a lower than expected water level - so after downloading The Booger I had to push her out about 30 yards before firing her up and getting going. I met Rudy at Okahu Bay, he jumped aboard, we shook hands etc, loaded him into a life jacket and got going. First stop would be Rough Rock. We set Rudy's gear up and tied on my deadly wee piper fly. I instructed Rudy where I'd hold the boat, where to cast, how long to let the fly settle and sink how to retrieve... the current was ripping so every chance of Mr Kingi being home. Rudy did everything just fine - BOOM! Fish On!

Fish on!

Ok there's a bit of grunt

Lifting

Grunting it out

It was obvious that this was a good fish, it dogged away down deep and kept the angler busy. We'd drifted half a km before we boated the fish - Yeah!

A quick measure and then Rudy released it - getting a face full for his troubles.

Over the next couple of hours the fishing was simply epic - great overhead conditions, great tide and wind direction meant that we could maximise every shot. As we moved around to find fish we noted very few boats out - strange for Auckland harbour on a Saturday morning. Not that we were complaining - esp as we lost count of fish hooked and landed. With the average fish size reducing we moved Rudy onto the #8 weight from the #11 and he continued to smash fish after fish. On several occasions, kingfish were smashing bait as we arrived at their lairs - simply stunning to see.

having Fun yet?

 

Finally at 10.30 the tide petered out, and bites dropped away correspondingly, so my little voices told me to... oops so we decided to head back up the channel and check out some terns... which became a cloud of whirling terns and sooty shearwaters. The sounder showed solid bait sign from surface to the bottom, with a bit sparse snapper sign on the bottom. We hung around casting for half an hour to no avail - where on earth where the kahawai that should be joining the melee?

Finally we trundled back to drop Rudy off. Congrats mate, that didn't feel the least bit like guiding at all, just a damn good fishing trip!

(By the way - and not that I've thought long and hard about this - I'd go fishing with Moses. If it got really rough he could part the sea; plus it is written that he had some visions up a mountain with a couple of tablets. That would have appealed in my student days...)

Not quite off the beaten track

Considering it's reputation for big trout, I'd never fished Lake Arapuni. It's one of the large hydro electricity producers on the Waikato River, and is home to rainbow and brown trout along with the usual assortment of coarse fish. So with a bit of exploration in mind, TT and I set off with boat in tow and headed to Arohena, the site of the southernmost boat ramp (excluding the crime ridden Waipapa landing). Given that we'd never been there before so not knowing what to expect, and having negotiated a bit of gravel we were stunned when we arrived at a beautiful DOC camp ground, well patronised by families in large tents. Boat trailers were everywhere; clearly its a very popular and pleasant spot.

We drove through the camp, dumped The Booger into the lake and set off.

The lake is stunning, surrounded by pine forest and a bit of native and the bottom features are interesting. Water qual not so great looking though, the water was a bit murky but I expect that the turbines at Waipapa chew up quite a bit of aquatic weed and spew it out.

As we travelled we marked streams entering the lake for attention later. We passed a few trollers on the way south.

As we got closer to the headwaters below Waipapa, the banks closed in somewhat. What a stunning lake. No sign of fish movement though. Finally we hit the mouth of the Mangawhio Stream, which leads up to a magnificent waterfall. We carefully negotiated the stream before tying off and fishing the stream up to the falls.

Only a short stretch, but devoid of fish. (We would find out why later).

Soon the sound of the waterfall came through the bush.

It was simply stunning, a great wild place. We fished the waterfall pool for half an hour without feeling that confident, then headed back downstream, jumped in the boat and continued south to the Waipapa dam.

While TT rigged to fish large weighted nymphs through the current edge, I dragged a smelt pattern through the rough water. No sign of fish, so we moved around to the spillway and fished that. Nada.

Heading back downstream, we arrived at the first stream entering the lake. A crystal clear chuckling brook, emptying into the murk of the lake - it looked a chance for sure. As we drifted by we worked the inflow and finally TT hit a fish. On the board at last, a fat little rainbow soon graced the deck.

A bit of a grip 'n grin session before the fish went back.

We stopped at the the next stream mouth and I searched it with the smelt fly - just missing a fish as it slashed at the fly when I lifted it to cast... damn. We fished over the lip for no joy, then carried on.

At the mouth

By now a decent breeze was pushing against the current, aborting our attempts to drift past cover and fish back into it. By the time we reached an area called The Sticks, we began to see late afternoon fish movement, most probably smelting, but given the time of day (approaching 5pm) we called it and headed back down to the campground.

While I went to fetch the truck, TT got into a conversation with some kids swimming nearby. It turned out that his family and others had fished the same areas as us each day so the chances of finding undisturbed fish were remote... plus there'd been a jet boat derby churning up the lake for a couple days previously.

I'll take those excuses as the reason for me not getting a touch all day!

This place deserves some attention out of holiday time for sure.

Hand to hand combat

Possibly the best way to describe fly fishing for kingis against structure is hand to hand combat. There's no real secret that over the summer months, Auckland Harbour's channel markers are littered with yellowtail kingfish from tiny in size to very respectable. I've seen what (for the location) can be described as 'large' fish in the 12 - 15kg class out there.

What time and experience teaches is maximising your success rate. It can be a costly pastime - over a summer I'd expect to destroy (completely) at least one fly line and to make several repairs. Time had conspired against me getting out there, so much so that I'd had to plan this trip a week in advance, to fit in around other commitments. to begin the day I needed a WOF for the boat trailer. I wiggled the dodgy light until it worked, crossed my fingers and headed down to the station. No problems, it sailed through. Mid afternoon I had my stuff packed and set off for Torpedo Bay. Unfortunately the southerly which had been forecast to be waning wasn't anywhere near done, so she'd be a tad bumpy out there. Torpedo Bay in a sth wind isn't the greatest ramp, but I really enjoy launching there. A friendly neighbourhood, good (free!) parking and you can grab a coffee after retrieving :).

I trundled across the harbour and picked up TT at Okahu, then we tied off to a buoy while we prepared the fly gear. Having battened down the hatches, first stop was Rough Rock which was holding plenty of fish down on the reef but nothing showed to TT's fly so we set off up the channel. At the #1 marker we had immediate success. My first and second casts both were bitten - nice to start the 'season' with a bit of success.

TT got on the board soon after.

His first fish was pretty damn close to legal - and pretty damn close to finding its way into the smoker.

We hit fish after fish - and the kingis weren't all that fussy about what flies they ate. Gotta love un-hassled kingis, after they get to see flies a few times they tend to wise up. After perhaps a dozen fish, we moved on. Seemed we'd left the treasure trove, but in reality the tide was turning and the fish switch off on slack current.

Still, I was able to see the occasional sizable specimen - but I didn't see the one that smashed my piper fly as it sank down the face of a marker - what I do know is that it was a larger fish and it hit the marker chain in a second flat.... cutting the damn fly line. lucky it was cut in the head, so still serviceable. I tied a stopper knot in the line and barrel knotted on a new leader.

Fly carnage

By 7pm, with wind against tide it was getting damn unpleasant for any type of fishing let alone fly casting, so we cut a track back to Okahu. Then across to Torpedo where I was able to skim the boat in in only 60cm of water.

This morning I had a bit of a repair job to do.

Ugly but functional repair

Tools

 

I made record time putting on and testing the new loop. Everything just flowed.

New loop

Will have to tie up a few replacement flies at some stage.


Merry Xmas everyone.

Back at The Ridge

Saturday was the second real post season working bee at Tui Ridge. We'd be putting up a new release pen with the aim of holding some of the new arrivals.

We got a good turn out - the pen site had a couple of challenges - both slope and strata. But this year we had a secret weapon, a tractor with post hole rammer.

Even so, it took a few hours to get it all done, with net up.

We fenced the pen off from marauding cattle and hit the road about 4. Its going to be a very interesting shoot in 2014.

Sad

Matt gave us a bit of an update on the missing BOP geese last night; (subject to confirmation) the Regional Council poisoned off 2,000 geese 3 weeks ago. They were ravaging the local maize crops which were in their juicy seedling/shoot stage at that time. As I say above; "subject to confirmation" as I cannot reference it all on the 'net. Not that I'd expect the council to proclaim such an event publicly. Sad.

Cool little video

Fish and Game's Mallard research programme gets a little promo clip.

There's always something to fix

And today it was time to work on the boat trailer. I needed to grease the main roller, get the wheels off and take some of the flaking rust off the hubs and generally get it ready for WOF... which is past due. Oops.

First, I downloaded The Booger onto my front lawn.

Then off with the wheels, one at a time naturally.

The hubs weren't too bad. Bearings fine, just a bit of surface rust to rub off with a wire brush on both the wheel and hub. Salt water just chews metal like breakfast so anything you can do to halt its progress is worth it in the long run.

I gave the hubs a spray with zinc coating as a sacrificial anode. Small hope really but it may help in the long run.

Checked over the springs, rollers, lights and after a couple hours of the boat sitting on the deck uploaded her back onto the trailer. Will go for a warrant next week at some stage.

Speaking of broken things, my trusty Canon G9 gas shat itself after 6 years of faultless service. These are the last images she captured, removed straight from the memory card onto the PC.  Unlike the title of this post, I wont be fixing the camera; last time I got a quote for something like that it was roughly 2/3 the camera price.

To the rescue! (2 weeks too late)

[Scene: Matt's World. Matt is being lazy. Or angry. Or both. Heh heh just kidden bro. He's probably actually being just being very busy running a couple of businesses at the moment]

Matt being calm and happy

Ring-ring (or bleep bleep, what ever his ph sounds like). Matt answers and its his farming buddy from Bay of Plenty - the geese are into his place. They need to be shifted.

Matt get's on the cell and collectively we all discover that we're in the same place - no way can we drop everything and get going. Tony's tied up on a house build. Chewie's got work commitments, I'm about to embark on a series of work related functions around the country, and Matt himself, well he's got his and another business to worry about.

We cross-check diaries and realise it will be 2 weeks before we can get there. So much for coming to the farmer's rescue. (which was a good part of the issue when F&G was managing geese - finding crews with the ability to drop everything, get going and do the dispersal). I booked in my leave. 2 weeks is a long, long time. By the time it had rolled around, we had a crew of 2. Matt travelled down to scout and reported in that the birds had moved on. Some goose kak was evident but the birds themselves were elsewhere.

I almost called it on the spot; work is pretty busy and I needed to catch-up on stuff that I'd let drop. But Matt reminded me that we're young and free, that anything can happen, and also that he's driven 3 and a bit hours so I should too. So out I went to cut grass and to dress the blind. Decoys and stuff into car. I found myself really enjoying the pre-hunt gathering of kit.

The alarm went at 3 and by 3.15 I was gone. Dawn had broken as I crossed the Kaimais and by the time I met up with Matt it was light. We drove down to our spot, arranged the dekes and blinds and began to hear honks as geese began to get a bit vocal.

Prime goose territory

A look around showed goose food for Africa. We wouldn't be dealing with starving birds, that's for sure. And they certainly weren't skinning the area we were hunting, the grass was thick.

Over the years we've spent plenty of time lying in paddocks looking at the sky - goose hunting successfully requires a set of circumstances that are pretty specific;

1. Scouting or being told that geese are there
2. Finding out where 'there' is, to the metre and setting up
3. Hoping that overnight, geese haven't changed their minds about where they want to feed
4. Shooting them

We had zero out of 4 covered.

But lying in a paddock in a beautiful and new part of the world certainly isn't bad - at all. We had cock pheasants calling around us, the weather was nice, the place certainly had potential and it was great to catch up with Matt. 

It beat being at work hands down. After a few hours we decided to walk the lower paddocks and scout for goose sign. We found that they'd been using some standing water at various stages.

Around which goose kak in various stages of desiccation were seen.

We wandered back to the spread and with it approaching 10.30 decided to call it. Matt and I looked at each other as we got to the cars and said to each other "you know what'll happen now.." - sure enough as we reached the paddock 8 or so geese were passing by looking at the dekes.

Back at the farmer's place for a coffee, he mentioned that his mate the maize contractor, was having all sorts of goose dramas as they honed in on his freshly sprouting maize. At least we knew where the birds were now going! And a new lead for next year....

Coromandel 2013

After the previous couple of year's trips with dad and Nik, I was really looking forward to this year's shot at big snapper feeding up under workups and getting ready to spawn. The only thing was... workups are few and far between this year, so we'd have to have a few plans up our sleeves.

Dad and I got to the new Big Angry Fish HQ; Debbie and Gail's new B&B atop the hill overlooking Long Bag on one side and Wyuna Bay on the other.

The view was beautiful, and with bush surrounds the bird life was epic. Tuis darted and dived and in the foreground several cock pheasants wound each other up.

Nik rolled in around 5 and we had a beer or 2 while we planned the next day. The weather would be as good as it could be, with a light SE putting a riffle on the surface. We decided to head up to Port Jackson for a fish around the reef systems with soft plastics. We got to Te Kouma at gentleman's hours, paid $10 (to launch and park on the road!!!) and set off. Stopping on the way north we couldn't find many fish, but dad snagged a goodie on a jig before we departed again. I don't like fishing with the moon in the Western sky by day, but when you gotta you gotta.

Nearing the top of the peninsula we stopped to try and deploy a burley trail back onto a point but the lack of current made the trail a depressing soup that sank straight down. Time for Plan C - to stick bait a reef system that Nik had always wanted to. With a 1.5 m swell rolling in, the proposition looked hairy - just how we like it!  We trucked in close, threaded between cray pots and took turns launching the baits. No joy, although occasionally kahawai showed an interest.

Here be kingfish. Well you'd think so...

Finally we were riding huge lifting swells in front of the reef before we decided on discretion and moved into the beach to see if we could get some small kahawai for livies. But no, no joy there either.

Which side of Channel shall we head to Nik? West Side! (We actually went to the East side...)

So with that, we made the call to go up to Channel Island and toss stick baits. We had a leisurely ride up in the big swell and on arrival were met with an extensive kahawai school, and amazingly for a Saturday, only 1 other boat. The first stick bait was cast in and about 2/3 of the way back to the boat kingis appeared under it. Next cast and BOOM! Fish on.

On Nik's custom Offshore 37kg bait stick it was a comfy fight, despite the swell and backwash from the island.

A few bucks worth

We cruised back in and next cast BOOM! Fish on. This time as I held the fish tight all his mates came out too. God I love indestructible gear. He came up and as he did so Nik grabbed the popper rod (big ugly Daiwa Monster Mesh) and smashed the popper down. A kingi grabbed it straight away and Nik shoved the rod into dad's hands. For the next 10 minutes the old man had a hell fight as he battled the fish, the rod, his hernia, the swell.. I shoulda kicked him in the kidney just to make it a real challenge! (Sorry pop when you read this..). Finally I was able to lift the fish in.

Then it was Nik's turn, BOOM! Fish on. He dealt to it quickly and release it soon after.

Who do I look like...?

By now the tide was turning and despite trying to tease a king into fly rod range it was futile as the kahawai disappeared. We moved around the island but the bite was done so we set sail back down the gulf to see if we could find a snapper.

By bye Channel Island

We moved around before at last finding bait and snapper sign. Over the side with small 18gr Grim Reapers to catch bait. I caught quite a number of yellow tail macks, while dad and Nik both snared blue macks... yum yum for a kingi. Then I got hit by a bigger fish, Conscious that my lure's little trebles had started to straighten I played the fish gently for a few minutes before a 3kg snap popped up. Sweet. We moved in close to an island to fish livies and cut baits for kings and snaps respectively; and despite a big few hour's effort came away empty handed. Back to the ramp to get to the fish and chippy before it closed - we made the deadline with 5 minutes to spare.

Dad hit the hay pretty quickly, and had a torrid night. I awoke near midnight myself - the heat was stifling, talk about February weather in November (the nutters will have you believing in Global Warming).

Sunday dawned fine and still. After such a big day yesterday, we'd called an easy day in the gulf looking for fish. The weather was primo. We drifted looking for fish and not finding many. Again the moon loitered in the western sky to piss me off but finally near midday it began to drop. As if someone hit a button, gannets began to circle and circle. We approached them and then it happened; not a full on frenzy but the gannets began to dive. Over went the jigs and we began to hook up. I rigged a ledger rig and dropped down baits. Over the next couple of hours the fishing was sustained without going mental; and the baits out-fished the jigs for size. Another learning - I'll be trying that tactic again.

Bait caught

We finished up with 20 odd fish in the bin before calling it a day; then back to Long Bay to clean the boat and catch. Dad and I hit the road, making Paeroa by 5.30 and putting me on a trajectory to be home by 7pm... a wee bit later than the mid afternoon I'd told SWMBO. That put me on a trajectory with the back of her hand!! Nah, not really.

Bloody awesome weekend. Great company, good fishing. Yeah, life's good.