Thanks to the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, we had this Thursday off, so we decided to make a long weekend of it and head out to the East Cape. We stopped in Whakatane on our way out and had a first class couch surfing experience, complete with fishing!It was P's first time fishing and my first time in a long while. I'd say it was a pretty successful fish trip. Within 5 minutes of putting our lines out, we had each caught a yellow mackerel and thrown them back in to pay tribute to the fishing gods. Apparently yellow mackerel aren't a particularly popular fish, so after keeping a few of the bigger ones, we threw many back in and I found myself trying to let them wriggle free of my line.
With a bit of patience and some bigger pieces of bait, we started to reel in some kahawai. It didn't take long before we had both caught a keeper to take home for lunch/dinner.
Finally, we managed to catch a gurnard, which was really exciting as it's a very pretty fish. We also caught some snapper, as well as a few slimy (blue) mackerel.
All in all, we had a pretty good catch that supplied the three of us with meals for at least the next three meals. We got try try each of the types of fish cooked in various ways - battered, pan fried, smoked. The smoked kahawai was quite tasty, but everything was delicious. Something about fresh catch of the day tastes 100 times better than store bought!
