The weather forecast was so-so, raising 20 knot northerlies and a 1.5 metre swell. I gave Murray a call Friday night for a 7 o'clock start Saturday and it was a go. Saturday morning was calm but with the clouds moving in the sky I left the boat at home and picked Murray up and headed up the coast for a look, the sea was calm with a small swell and a light northerly, so we headed back and hitched the boat on the Prado and headed to the harbour. We launched Gazebo and set the GPS to Aerial reef and headed out. The calm waters started to change about 10 k's out into the usual slop, we reached our mark at Aerial reef (16k's offshore) and dropped the anchor. The conditions weren't that good, the sea was choppy with a freshening northerly but the current was with us for straylineing so over the side went the berley sack and baits were soon in the water. It didn't take long before the first snapper was in the bin. We were having trouble with barracuda and the odd shark and replacing a lot of traces. Soon the snapper took over and were on the bite and a steady stream of snapper was being caught.
In the Gisborne fishery the minimum legal snapper size is 27cm and the limit to take is 10 snapper each, we have a rule on board "if you have to measure it, it is too small" we were letting go snapper around the 35cm size. The biggest one we caught was about 5kg most being around 2 kg mark (the best eating size), in the end we had 18 in the bin and it was time to go. It was good to know we are still able to find fish and the mojo was back after last weekends failure. I have a feeling Murray secretly likes straylineing but he is not letting on as he didn't put up much of a fight as he usually does.
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