12.09.10 Spring has sprung

Triple hook up of Hapuka (40kgs of fish)

The weekends forecast was good - darn good. Murray and I left at 6.30 and launched at Tata ramp. The sea was calm with a small swell, we were going to go to penguins for a snapper fish but the conditions were so good we kept on going to TR1A. A spot we had gone to before without much success. TR1A is about 35km out to sea, when we arrived there was a charter boat already on the spot. The rock had 6 metres of fish on it. Our first drift yielded a nice trumpeter, soon another one joined it in the bin. the charter boat was pulling them in one after the another, being a large commercial cray boat it was able to sit on top of the rock making it hard for us to drift over the hot spot. We had to drift along the sides of the reef, Murray hooked on to something large - it took him ages to wind it up from the bottom a 180 metres down, near the surface it looked like a large stingray then 3 Hapuka (Groper) broke the surface - 3 hooks = 3 puka (16, 13 and 11kg, 40 kg in all). We were jumping for joy as we had seen it on TV but never experience a triple hook up before, now our fish bin was full and we had to use a sack for 2 of them. We did one last drift and I hooked the bottom but I could feel fish biting and then one got hooked, mean while we were drifting away while I was letting out more line and trying to do everything I know to unsnag me. It took Murray an age to pull his gear in so he could start the boat and reverse back to the spot, the sinker finally broke off and I was able to wind my gear in to find I had caught 2 large Trumpeter, now the bin was full with 5 fish and 2 more overflowing into our sack, not being greedy it was time to head home. We manged to feed just about everyone we know so there wasn't anything wasted. Sunday was even better conditions but with the fridge full we decided to save money and not go out, hopefully the next weekend will be good.