day 177: neoprene queen
Jamie (finally): There’s been a lot of talk (from me) about fish pies and carbonara. But after sailing upwind for 8 hours and diving amongst the kelp beds for 2 hours it leaves little room for extravagant meals in the evening lulled by tui song and wind gusts. We are so lucky to be exploring these east coast islands. Great barrier was awesome, saw lots of snapper and a big kingy I chose not to take because it would have taken me for a ride. I tied up to the mussel farm for some bottom fishing from the dinghy and pulled up 4 snapper while mushing up some mussel burley conveniently located right next to me on the commercial mussel farm. Take that out of your profit margin you dogs. Mercury island was amazing terrain with kaka overhead and so many nooks for cray fish to hide. I got one on my way back to the dinghy which went down a treat. Today at mayor island we are a little closer to Tauranga and the visibility is remarkably better in the water here. I found a school of blue mao mao which I’ve shot in Tauranga before and are delicious and easy to shoot so I took four of them for the FISH PIE TOMORROW. I then found a massive school of bait fish and followed them around for a while hoping some kingys would show up. A couple small ones did which were undersize. I gutted my mao mao in amongst the bait fish hoping some burley might show up a bigger kingy. Instead a nice snapper came under me. I ducked down and shot it. First snapper shot I’m so stoked. So great to be back in nz in the wind and cold rain but the bird song is great. Next stop the opshops in Tauranga to clean out the jumpers and duvets for the mission down to Marlborough.