It was the calm after the storm as Saturday's raging cappuccino cauldron on the Tamaki Strait flats gave way to Sunday's surreal stillness, and I decided it was prime time to take my two youngsters on an afternoon old-school bait and berley mission.
It was the 5-year-old's first proper fishing trip alongside his comparative veteran 7-year-old brother in our little blue FC465. Exciting stuff.
Keeping an eye out for storm flotsam in the green water, we zoomed across the light SW chop to the vast 8m-deep zone out from Beachlands, chose a spot with a bit of sign on the Garmin, deployed the anchor and the boat swung nicely into line with the incoming tide. I set a berley basket near the bottom and cast out half pilchard baits on simple light strayline circle hook rigs on my trusty Ugly Stik rods and mono-loaded spin reels (perfect forgiving outfits for this kind of small boat action with kids).
The first tentative customer was about 25cm, but not long after one of the rods in the holders bent and was our first keeper. The next three hours went by in a blur of the boys taking turns to wind in fish - while Dad tended to the berley basket, remembered to feed some chopped pillies into the current as ground bait, re-baited with pillies, sorted a doozy of a tangle when a kahawai grabbed the sabiki rig and took a quick circuit through the rod spread, and tried to supervise the consumption of bite-sized Picnic bars going on behind me.
As usual, a drop of sabikis into the berley trail showed jack mackerels had zeroed in on it and we plucked them out as required to be deployed freshly chopped and wriggling on the 8kg set up and a 1 oz ball sinker, cast way out the back. And as usual, they sat seemingly untouched until wham, a good snapper took off towards Ponui and the rod bent over alarmingly.
The best mackerel muncher pulled line like a freight train in the shallows: "Dad's turn to wind in, boys". It was definitely giving off snapper vibes, rather than ray or bronzie. The 7-year-old volunteered himself for net man duties, and we were all incredibly excited when a cracking fish for the flats - 61cm, 9lb - finally emerged from the murk and was lifted aboard. The boys were fascinated later when an autopsy showed two small decomposing flounder and a crunched up big crab in its bulging guts.
Strangely, the action slowed as dusk approached, but with youngsters on board it was time to head for home anyway. The sky turned pink and the sea flattened out even more. The big smiles on faces and the excited story telling to mum on the beach was well worth the clean up long into the darkness (I'd forgotten how bloody it is chopping up freshly caught kahawai and mackerel - with the deck and sides of the boat looking like a B grade horror scene through a bright head lamp).
But unlike most slasher movie victims, those unfortunate mackies definitely didn't die in vain.
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