Was ridiculously hard!!! I fished saturday and sunday and today -or rather drove boat around aimlessly in a seemingly empty ocean. Other half got grumpy because we didn't get a strike or win the trip to Vanuatu in contest -possibly the skipper's fault

. I saw 1 dolphin and one school of frightened saury in 3 days. I went south, I went north, I went wide ,I went close. Closest we got was when Cara J hooked a nice 108kg stripe just ahead of us yesterday morning, and today a boat got a double not far from us. Only consolation was lots of other boats seemed to suffer same fate. As John Going said to me last night -"the fish seemed to be no where in particular".
The other John on Westcoaster found a stray one yesterday wide of ocean beach - and Julie his wife landed the stripee round 90kg - but John is a great fisherman -so may be when he says "you have to be lucky" he's only partly right.
Also met Greg1 from Whangerei -who got a small spearfish yesterday. He recognised my boat name of this Site -which was pretty cool - as was his boat. Always great atmoshpere at Tuts and we got a free concert last night with some classic NZ music from Dave Dobyn, Bik Runga and Tim Finn.
Oh well -that is how it goes - still keen to get out there again and must be saved up some luck in last 3 days and at least weather was quite good -which is always nice when your spending most of it on a 5 meter stabi.
Shane G