The fishers left Nelson on Seabird Charter's "Cappy" for D'Urville Island on a clear, calm day. The worries of Cyclone Pam from the previous week had passed. The weather forecast was good though the tide was the biggest for the month (That proved to be of no consequence)

On our way to the fishing ground we again sampled Lynley's Date Scones and got aquainted with each other. The proposed Ladies fishing trip had failed to attract enough starters and so we had a Ladies and Gents crew.

The fish were forthcoming when we began fishing - the first snapper came aboard after about five minutes, followed by blue cod and tarakihi. After tiring of harvesting here, we shifted close to shore and caught more cod, tarakihi and trevalley. Some "secret weapons" were tried out - chicken heart baits and scented sinkers but mostly we used normal gear and squid and barracouta baits. The barracouta loved the flasher rigs used so they did not last long.

Steve donned his diving gear and sought out some crayfish. He returned with a couple of these, and thought he would return for the many paua present in the area.

We continued to fish in other places around Port Hardy and found spots where barracouta and sea perch were plentiful. One soul thought he had hooked a kingfish but when it finally came up to the boat it proved to be an enormous barracouta. A couple of large Kawhai were caught.

Lynley stated that sea perch took a lot of effort to fillet for very little return in fillet size, so if anyone wanted these, they could take them home whole and fillet them themselves. None were taken home.

Because there were so many fish to fillet, we returned home early, with one stop to catch the last blue cod to make up our quota. Everyone caught one or two large cod in about ten seconds and so all except the largest were thrown back to grow bigger and be caught another day.

Another trip - another day.