Gee Im glad when Monday comes back around.
Got up Saturday morning thinking how weird it was not getting pestered by my eldest daughter about what or where we were going in the boat for the day. Looked out the window to see the boat was already down the drive and hitched up to the 4x4 ready to go:help:
Looking at the rods, spear guns and wetsuits I assumed she had it all covered. Plan was to head offshore in the little rib and hunt down a tuna, her plan was to smack one in the face with her gun.
Just inside the shelf we came across big bait balls of pilchards working the surface feeding on krill. After seeing a few big fish around the edges of these we started flicking lures. With no luck and something pretty big heading straight at us my daughter started suiting up to get in. At first we thought there were some kind of big sharks but as they got closer we realised they were devil rays, a close relative of manta rays.
Unfortunately by the time my daughter got in most of them had dropped down into deeper water. After about and hour of jumping in on several different bait balls she managed to get a few pics of a couple.
Water temp 14'c.
From there we headed out another hour offshore to the seamounts only to hear yellowfin, bluefin and albacore were another 30 k offshore. 70-80 km offshore is getting a bit far for us in a 5m rib so we headed back to the shelf for a grand catch of 1 pilchard and 1 striped tuna.
Had a little look around the island but it seems that warm water we had a week ago may of been enough to trigger the lobsters back out to deep water. Georgia still got a few shots of the seals and terns etc.
After 120 km and a full day on the water she still squeezed in a 10 k run in the evening.
Sunday we just headed out to see what damage had been done in deeper water from last months storms. The inshore dives are looking extremely poor with almost all weed, sponges and other marine growth torn from the rocks. Heaps of cheeky old gropers about though.
By the way the 120km trip used a grand total of 38 lts of fuel which Im pretty happy about, means next time we can go further with our 100 lt tank.
Jon
