I know, I know ... what people really want is an update on the fishing.



We have tried it many ways: from the pier and in a boat, on a donkey or a goat. And fish or no fish, I can't complain about a single minute of it, because it's a beautiful thing to be out on the water.

Let's start with the most recent expedition. We decided to hit the local rivers, and I had a brainstorm that the trees were teeming with cicadas, so this might make a good live bait. That meant we spent the morning climbing trees, catching cicadas (we got better and sneakier at this) and popping them into a milk bottle.

We then set off for the Motueka river where we had previously scouted a number of fish & game access points. One of them turned out to be a fine swimming hole but not much place to fish, two other spots we gave it a go without success. I was surprised, really. Not even a bite. Maybe it was the wrong time of day, maybe we didn't do a good job of presenting the bait, maybe the access points are fished out. Yep, it would be great to know a friendly farmer with prime river frontage.




Sometimes when we are out for a drive, we stick the rods and tackle in the car and leave ourselves open to chance. This is a spot near Pelorus and a beautiful spot it is, but... no fish. Andrew tried spinning with his prize new frog lure, which proceeded to snag on a log or a rock or who knows what. We could see the line going into the water and judge about where the lure was, and A. went in for an ice cold swim but really couldn't get it. Barbara - who always wins the prize for last one at the beach as winter comes on - well, she declared she was not going to go save our frog lure for us. So I decided to take a dip, see if I couldn't rescue our new frog lure. You go, polar bear.

People say that you can use a mouse lure, and there are tales of using live mice, to catch some of these big fat river trout. But we haven't gone that far, and so far no joy with froggy.

Since all that sounds pretty grim, I will recount a more successful expedition to the Marlborough Sounds. Picture below. Again we spent time in the morning getting our bait, which in this case is spotties caught off the pier. That's good fun in itself, but then we headed out toward deeper water.

We were chumming the water with a frozen salmon block, via a burley pot with some lead weights in it. This had attracted (or maybe we were just in a lucky spot) a bunch of kahawai which we were pulling in pretty much as fast as we could net them. They weren't large, but edible and we were enjoying ourselves. Andrew was using a small spincast rod with a medium hook and line. All of a sudden he got a huge tug, right up by the boat.

"I got something!" he says, but then it releases. What's that, I'm thinking, maybe he hooked the anchor line. But then it comes again, three feet from the boat, a silver-blue flash in the water, and the rod tip bends auspiciously. Whoa!

Whatever it is, Andrew pulls his smaller fish right out of its mouth, and up pops the littler one swinging through the air on only a few feet of line. "Drop it back in," I say. Who knows, right?

He plops the spottie into the water right off the side of the boat and as Andrew has now christened it, "The monster from the deep" is immediately all over it. The spottie and the line were gone, just like that. This added some excitement for all of us, and we are still debating what "it" was. Andrew thinks a large blue cod. I am inclined toward a kingfish.

Anyway there's a lesson here, and that is, once that larger fish has locked on, it wants its dinner and it is pretty much impervious to your presence, the boat floating in the water, or anything else you'd think might have thrown off the chase. At least in this case.

To catch that monster, Andrew, we're going to have to get you a bigger rig.