Gazebo Fishing: The 21st Annual Cricket Fishing Trip

As I wrote in my last blog the heavy rain warning was correct, Monday and Tuesday it blew and it poured, the road north has been cut by a massive slip for the last 2 weeks and the road south was cut by flooding and the railway line South (the only one) was washed out so badly it may never open again....But the road East (to Cape Runaway) was open and in good condition for the first time in many years (normally heaps of road works etc).
We left Wednesday morning and reached the house we rent at lunch time, the owners told us that they hadn't had much rain, so with that we unloaded the 4x4's and had a quick recon to see if the conditions were OK and they were, so by 2pm we had the small boats in the water and we were soon on Cricket Island with baits in the water. Fishing was slow with only 2 snapper caught - both to Johnstone with the heaviest at 2.3kg.
That night the wind picked up and it blew and the rain poured and about midnight it changed direction and came back at us. The morning bought calm conditions and the rain had gone - well almost. We had a late breakfast and at 10am some of the boys cracked a cold one or two and decided it was going to be a lay day. Not being a big drinker, 4 of us packed our gear and went for a drive to find somewhere to fish and we found a nice rock in a sheltered bay and spent the afternoon enjoying the sun as there wasn't much happening on the fish front.
Friday dawn was clear and calm so we packed the boats and headed to Lottin to fish our rock, the sea was a bit swelly and still a little choppy but we made it ok to our spot and were able to fish a sheltered area that produced a lot of pan sized snapper and the odd shark, I managed to catch a 4.3kg snapper that put me in the lead for the Green Jacket, that didn't last long as 4 of the team had gone over the hills on 4x4 bikes and Pooh managed a 16.8kg Kingfish to take the lead. That evening we bought out the clay bird launcher we had hired and a couple of shot guns and had a spot of target practise.
Saturday dawned calm again and we loaded the boats and headed to the Cape Rocks, but sadly the surge was big, making it to dangerous to get ashore so we headed to Maoris. 2 of the boats went to one rock and Johnstone and I felt it was a bit crowded so we headed to another spot further round, it proved to be a good spot with a steady stream of nice sized snapper coming in all day (all but 5 were released). We put out a number of live baits under balloons only to have them all taken by sharks, but it was a very nice day in the sun on the rocks. We got back to the house to find that Pooh had caught another Kingfish 17.6kg and was this years fishing champion taking the Green Jacket. Again we had another round of target shooting blasting off 500 rounds over the 2 days (the way a number of the boys shot the ducks have nothing to worry about).