A Fish To Fry

Certainly Kiwi's love the water and one of the main reasons they love it is for the joy of fishing. Owning a boat or having a good mate that owns one is almost a requirement for being a native here. Some love the thrill of the troll while others just love all the new innovative ways to go about the sport. We saw three examples of how to pursue the hobby.

The first, and certainly the simplest fishing right off the dock or rocks. Nothing too interesting that it would warrant a photo.

The second is fishing from a boat. This man drove his truck and boat right down to the water's edge to launch his boat and now he is trying to get the boat out of the water and back on the trailer. We saw this action repeated several times.

This is a rather humble boat but they all seemed to enjoy the activity. We saw much fancier outfits but they were all happy with the results.

The third way was fishing from the beach.  And we saw two examples of it.  The first is for an individual who likes to say he caught the fish and eat the fish but maybe does not have the time or means to be on the water.  This is like a very large reel. I have not figured out how it is cast but he connected about 20 hooks to this reel and cast it into the ocean.  He let it run out for about 20 minutes and then stopped it.  It sat there until he was ready to reel it in and the hope was all of those hooks would have something attached to them. I saw him setting this up and then fifteen minutes later I saw him come back but never saw him bring it in.

The next photo is a more sophisticated version of the above one. 

It is kind of like a big shotgun. The white cylinder on the front has a propeller with a battery and a timer. They get the reel all set with all the 20 hooks and then they would shoot it, like a gun. The battery was on a timer so you could set it to just keep going on this battery power for up to 45 minutes. So you shoot it in the ocean and it runs out for 20 minutes and then it turns off. They you reel it in, just like the other one and hope for a good catch.  

We came across this man and his two sons. They are reeling it in. You can see the reel and the man is holding on to it with a cloth so it does not get tangled. It takes as long to reel it in as to the time the battery was running.  They usually do it at low tide.  This time they only caught three fish. One was a snapper which is my favorite to eat as fish and chips. This is the other one that they caught. It is called a grunard. They have wings on both sides of their body. The young boy wanted to be sure I saw how pretty and unique they were.  They don't fly but I think they use it to stir up the bottom of the sea since that is where they usually reside.