Sad, as we used to come down from Matheson bay as a family and harvest half a bucket for feed where you could walk out at low tide… then as time went on people arrived with sacks and took heaps.
As a kid, before Omaha groins were built, was big pipi bed immediately out from ti point wharf. You could dive in swim across at low tide and get a tog ( togs were big but could still fit big pipis in 4 either side of my much smaller weaner) , was a few to eat as a snack and few for bait to catch a parore, trevally or if you were real lucky a nice pannie size snapper.
Was mainly green hand lines back then (early 70s) but I was a spoilt little bugger and age 10 graduated on my birthday to an early shimano delux spin set up ( viewed that rod and reel probably 50 times (like went there every second day after school) at stirling sports Glenfield mall, before my parents finally agreed to purchase it for my birthday… must have driven store owner crazy) , and my little bro had a nice orange solid fibre glass rod with little Diawa spin reel (we still have that in our family vintage tackle rack) … which once took a big snapper off wharf … about 6lb. He got that from the Warkworth tackle shop, a year or so later… and by then I was already feeding my family with fish from the wharf and rocks.
Those were the days. We used special small strong hooks to fish those pipi baits, purchased from old English gent who had that great old tackle shop in Warkworth on side of roadside by river as you drove into town coming from the Leigh side.
Paradise has been wrecked!