Straight away - Bang! This was no cod!
by Kane McArtney
Most of the time the Island Explorer fishes commercially for surf clams in Cloudy Bay, but she had been on the hard at Pelorus Marine in Havelock and Rhys (skipper) and myself had to do the nine knot slug back to Port Underwood.
Leaving the Pelorus Sound, we slightly diverted our course for the open Cook Strait to a spot we had heard about. The deep blue was glass calm and as we slowed the old girl over the submerged rock we were to fish, a dozen large kingfish cruised under the boat about 10m down. The sounder told us fish were about, so we dropped the pick in about 20m of water in the middle of nowhere. Using the bacon rind we saved from breakfast, we baited small flashers and managed to get some new bait in the form of sea perch. The tide was so strong and with no land bearing to visually mark our position it felt like we were underway. We fried in the sun for a while catching some big blue cod, the biggest being 56cm.
As we fished, the tide slackened off to nothing so up with the pick to drift over some deeper holes. Once again the sounder looked promising, so we made a drop in 100m. Straight away - bang! This was no cod! I hauled in my first puka on the old Abu Garcia eggbeater that was grinding, with the spool swaying from side to side. The 10kg line loved it. The rush and panic of making a gaff from a fuel tank sounding-stick turned to big hugs and kisses with fish on the boat.
Another five groper came on board and we had one last drop. The poor old eggbeater just couldn't move this one. It was big. A six-foot greyboy finally reached the surface to be quickly finned, trunked and flushed with the deck hose. The albatrosses were loving the scraps.
Darkness was coming, so we filleted and steaked whilst underway. All the food came out of the chilly-bin sized fridge to make room for way too much fish. All in all it was a good day on the strait.
