Fishing 2

So it turns out perhaps there is a source for my utter uselessness on the fishing front. I am going to blame it on the genes.

Despite it absolutely blowing a friggen gale I responded in the affirmative when my father asked if I would like to go fishing with him yesterday. My father is a special breed. He refuses to read this blog for instance, treating it as some demonised public confessional where I shouldn’t be airing my dirty laundry. He still wont embrace the metric system, instead converting everything into inches, feet, furlongs, pints and gallons, despite having been introduced to regular units when they changed in NZ when he was 7. He is one of three boys raised on a farm in the same town where I grew up, and is known as the "townie" of the lot of them. His man-skills are few and far between.

After refusing to embrace cell phones until the early 00's my dad now carries one like it is a small child or a vital organ and feels the need to have one of those hideously irritating ringtones that are excessively loud and long and are played not only for phone calls but for instant messages as well. He also delights in the fact that everyone else finds it intrusive and suffers when the phone erupts into this violent digitised jingle which is near abuse to the ear. This hideous electronic nightmare and the reactions that follow usually result in my father breaking into a kind of special jig of excitement.

Upon arriving at the boat ramp to launch our wee runabout, it was apparent that the ramp was not in high demand and although the sun was having a cancer-party on my nose, there was a fairly strong breeze. I didn’t think much of it and clearly neither did my father (although he has been known to have the balls of Steve Irwin when it comes to commencing and/or continuing adventures in foul or hazardous conditions) or younger brother who was also brazen enough to come along.

The ride out beyond the safe calm waters of the harbour to our spot at 93ft was relatively uneventful, other than aforementioned younger sibling feeling seasick and several fully airborne moments over swell in the entrance. According to Dad its far better to hit the gas halfway up a swell and fly midair James Bond style whilst passengers are attempting to prevent bit lips, broken noses or concussion than to potter over at a reasonable speed like the boat we followed.

Upon arrival, my brother and I were enlisted to bait the long line hooks and did so with military precision. About 3/4 of the way through the ~25 hook process little brother and Dad somehow had a handling error which resulted in a hook through my father’s finger which was followed by a string of pirate language while my brother struggled to pull the hook out. After several minutes of profanity worthy of a soldier, my brother gave up and I got the task of relieving Dads finger from the foreign body - somewhat comparable to restling a crocodile mid death roll.

Next we dropped anchor and set up some boat rods. The weather got progressively more revolting. Here is a summary of the following hour;

• 2 x caught each others line

• 1 x caught the motor

• 0 bites

• 1 brother who lay in the cabin feeling seasick

• 1 brother who refused to ever fish again

• 3 x sunburn

• 3 x frustration

• 2 x swamped rear of boat by water

• 1 x anchor that was near impossible to retrieve even with 2 people due to extremely rough water which lead to 2 x drowned rats, 10 x hand blisters many bruises and lots of raised voices.

• 0 fish

• 1 x unretrieved long line which my poor mother was enlisted to go out and collect later that evening

Ride home was something out of an action film. But we made it. All said my father is a kind and generous man, who I love, admire and respect very much and I hope that one day he gives in and reads this and it makes him smile.

Mahalo.

C.K.

My life is a Ben Stiller movie I - Fishing

I always thought I had reasonable man-skills. Being bought up in and around the country, I'm a little rough around the edges to say the least. Generally I operate the majority of farm machinery, vehicles, tools and equipment with varying degrees of success but by and large give things a reasonable shot. Up until a few weeks ago I thought I was at least a fair to middling fisherman too. Well it turns out the BF seems to be kryptonite to my man-skills…everything I used to do impressively ‘for a girl’ has turned to custard including my ability to surf, skate, play tennis, pool, converse about all things sporting, and now I can add fishing to that list. Well I had this fantastic idea to borrow my dad’s boat (not an unusual or rare event) to take the BF out fishing. Little did I know what I had gotten myself in for.

Well things began well, set up the lines, packed the boat, checked the motor was tickety-boo, hooked the trailer to the Nissan and made the mammoth journey 150m from the end of my parents driveway to the boat ramp. So far so good. As I was amidst utilising another learned man-skill, backing the trailer, I noticed the neighbours indicating to something attached to the boat. I got out only to find screeds of nylon attached to a now empty reel and leading back to the house where it must've hooked on a tree or something as we had left the driveway. After winding the entire reel of nylon back on I continued backing the boat in. First time, no trouble.

So I am at the helm looking nautical and windswept like any good captain should. Manage to navigate a tricky entrance, leaving the safety of the harbour for the open ocean. Upon arrival at my so-called spot x it is mutually agreed to drift rather than anchor. After getting sufficiently bait-smelling, my line looks to be in order and I decide to cast my line out away from the boat. Less than 2 shakes of a lambs tail later, my line has drifted back under the boat and become impossibly tangled around the motor. Fantastic. The next 30 minutes are spent with the BF nearly up to his chest in the water trying to untangle the line from the propeller whilst I fret about the rate we are drifting over a scary looking sandbar and the swell is rapidly turning into breaking waves. In the nick of time the BF earns serious man-points for removing aforementioned fishing line and we motor away from impending doom to safety.

Once back to spot x we decide this time to anchor. I instruct the BF to “just fish” while I sort out my line and try not to cause anymore trouble. The BF flashes me jet-stares followed by rolled eyes when I refuse to let him help me. Of course, much to my frustration I am in birds nest country after about a minute, end up cutting off half of the line and retiring from the sport for the day.

I forgot to mention it was overcast and blowing a gale but while we didn’t actually get a single bite, and in spite of all the mayhem at least it was memorable and we both had a good laugh.

C.K.