Waitangi Weekend

				JRDO, Sharkslayer and myself got hold of a 535 haines and made a plan to dive the mokes at Waitangi weekend.
So we, um, launched from omaha and headed to the mokes. It was a bit rough on the way over and Sharkslayer wasn't too happy with the whole situation- weaner.
First dive of the day was on a bit of a deep ledge where, lo and behold, we found a good school of goldies. it was nice diving as three in clear water, it gave you longer rest period between dives and spotting the diver below was easy. Anyway on my first drop a big school of probably fifty goldies paraded up to me. Nice. We did a few more dives, and speared a few, sharkslayer got his first, then I took the camera down to film JRDO shooting his. I was pretty chuffed to be getting down to them with the camera (which is about the same size as a bucket) and thought I was doing well until we watched the footage and it was out of focus. 
Bugger. 
Haven't had that problem for a while now.
So with goldies done and dusted we left them in their little house for another day (or not, poor wee things) and headed out for a snoop. 
I got lucky and got an 8kg and a 3kg in the surge and the others picked up a few too. JRDO reported the weedline to be as dead as a dodo. We later snooped another piece of coast and I found a pair of really nice snapper in a gut just lazily milling around, it was a perfect situation and I reached out and put my gun about 100mm from the biggest one's head and drilled it. It rolled over and spastically flapped a few times then swam off. Somehow, a shot to the back of the head from point blank had torn out, I have no idea how. I was pretty annoyed, I mean you can understand losing a gut-shot fish, or one hit high in the head, but this shot was a good one, I can only assume it was a flopper thing? Ah well.
We spent the remainder of the day diving a few other places here and there, more or less just enjoying having nice dives rather than slaying copious amounts of fish. 
JRDO and I tried to salvage a craypot from 30 metres, which proved a wee bit too tricky.
That was us for the day, so we tucked into a little bay, cast a squid jig out and cranked up the drum and bass while we had dinner and decided to stay the night.
Night time was terrible. JRDO and Sharkslayer spooned up forward, while my bed consisted of two wet towels and a speargun bag (glad tankers are padded!). So after 2 hours sleep we were back into it. 
Plan for day two was to snoop the early morning and then slash and flash on the pins for a big kingy.
A quick relocation saw us in an area I'd dived once before and done OK at. Choice, there were three of us and only two directions in which to go... what to do?
Well Sharkey went one way and JRDO went the other, I stayed within 50 metres of the boat and bounced up and down on a 10m ledge that dropped to 20, which gave me three snapper within 5 metres of each other (in fact two I shot from the exact same position in the same way). The snapper were stacked up on a wall and they were not too alert, I snooped one which may have gone 2.5 if you had generous scales and two good ones 6-7kg just swam straight up to me and then drifted back over the ledge. A few kina thrown in the right spot had the fish coming in close enough for a shot. One went ~3kg, the other 4.5. there were a few hummers down deeper too, but they were too deep and I wasn't feeling that flash.
The others had shot a few snapper too, and we soon decided that a 40kg kingy was going begging, so flashers were set on a few selected areas and we waited for the magic to happen. It didn't. 
Sharkey saw a good one but had no chance at a shot, JRDO saw a couple of 25s and I only saw them to maaaaaaaaaybe 15kg. We jumped in on a workup of kahawai, trevally and koheru about a k from the nearest rock or island, down below the action I thought I saw a pinky? so I dived and there below me was a pin covered in them that came up to about 8 metres. Store that one in the memory bank!
On the way home we stopped in at the LB weedline, JRDO wanted a boarie and I wanted to film him threepronging [a bronzie]. Alas, the weedline was dead, which was probably an effect of the zero current?
That was more or less it, we headed home at 38knots with the stereo blaring and that was that.

**On a side note, as we were coming past Ti Point at a responsible speed (no sh*t) a 4.7 terminator with two spearos on board almost rammed us, they were coming from behind us at an angle and going faster than we were. Both POB were looking off to their starboard, with us on their port side. They got to within a few metres of us before we noticed and 'politely' told them to 'please not drive into us' .
If it was anyone from here- you were lucky. Twice. I know lots of people who would have dealt to you at the ramp for that.

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