Taranaki Comp – Mental

Ok, here it is at last, sorry for the delay…

Friday
Finish packing my bags, end up with one rucksack and one back pack full of gear and clothes and one home made rod tube for a couple of rods, Mrs Mental gives me a ride out to the airport, check my bag in and get told it’s another $15 for the rods to ride on the plane too…

Suppose I should just explain here that yes I’m FLYING to a kayak fishing comp… No I’m not loaded, I just struck it lucky with the guys at Viking Kayaks, someone posted about the comp back in January and I said I’d like to go but didn’t know if I could be bothered driving all that way etc and it was a shame I couldn’t fly there and have a kayak there waiting for me to jump in and use for the weekend, well I got a message the next day saying if I got myself there then there would be a kayak waiting for me to use all weekend! So booked the campsite and used my Air Points (I fly a lot with my day job) to book the flights!

Where is the Taranaki swell?

Off the plane and find the shuttle there waiting to take me to the campground. Get to the campsite and check in, get told I’m in site 18 next to the gate, that’s ok but where is cabin 3 where my buddy for the weekend is staying, I get shown that’s it’s just down the other end of the camp, that’s fine. So I wander over the road, and start to pitch my tent, just get it out the bag and the camp owner pulls up and says “I’m moving you to next to your buddy”, fantastic!

Ok, tent up, still no sign of my buddy, he was supposed to be there before me! ah well, wander around the camp/beach meeting a few people, talking to the Viking guys, trying to find out where people are fishing for the weekend, yea like they are gonna tell me that

Friday swell…

Anyway buddy turns up, Sean, I get the kayak off the Viking guys, and start to fill it/rig it for the weekend.

My ride for the weekend

Then we head off to the briefing. Briefing went ok but seemed a little disorganised, was probably expecting something more along the lines of the Beach and Boat briefing but it still seemed sufficient. A couple of beers and a feed at the bar and back to camp for some sleep before the Saturday onslaught

Friday sunset

Saturday
Rise nice and early and get the kayaks down to the beach, yep we pretty much just fished off the Oakura Campground beach all weekend, the issue with not doing you home work before you get there, probably should have tied up with a local too, next time…

Loaded and ready to go

Saturday sunrise

Headed out off the beach and paddled south for a bit, about two bays down and had a troll around, Sean picked up quite a few nice Kahawai which turned out to be just under 2kg each, and I picked one up too, just over 2kg. Action was pretty slow so we had a paddle around looking for fish, I didn’t have a sounder on my loan kayak so was sticking pretty close to Sean who had his sounder

Sean with his first fish of the day

We picked up all sorts of bits and pieces, blue cod, wrasse, rock cod etc – Another point worth thinking about when planning a trip/comp that is not in your back yard… Find out what the average size is for the area so you know when you have something big… The first blue cod I picked up was obviously a legal blue cod but had no idea if it was big or small for the area, as it didn’t look huge back it went, it then turned out to be mu biggest blue cod I caught all weekend… No worries though it wasn’t bigger than the winners

So after catching some 20 plus fish we decided to call it a day and paddle back into the camp, now to tackle the surf… Yes I know that was like the flattest that Taranaki ever gets but still more than I’m used to in Auckland… So a little surf and a new kayak (without a rudder) what to do, ah well just give it a go, what’s the worst that can happen… Yep you guessed it, I rolled it, in what turned out to be all of 1 foot of water!

Yep I rolled in this…

So off to the weigh in, we stand in line with everyone else with our Kahawai, weigh in didn’t seem to start on time for some reason but we got there in the end, as mentioned above not massive Kahawai but I beat my buddy

My little 2kg Kahawai

Sunday
Again head off the beach at the camp, along with several others today… Wind and swell have picked up quite a but but still not the normal Taranaki conditions I’m told

The “swell”

I spotted a cray boat pulling and setting pots about 1 km off the beach, I assumed he wouldn’t have these on the sand so there must be some sort of feature out there, so i head out to him, just to see him pulling empty pot after empty pot…

Not just me catching nothing…

Fish for about 4/5 hours and pick up fish after fish after fish but still no Snapper and still nothing big, ok well the Barracuda were pretty big! Actually they were my first ‘cuda from the kayak, would be nice if they were my last too…

Such a nice fish… NOT

So nothing to weigh in on the second day for me, Sean picked up a bunch more Kahawai but nothing bigger than the first day so they went straight into the auction box to raise some money for the local surf life savers

The competition winners were then presented with their prizes and a great comp came to an end, overall a very well run event, has a few areas for improvement but what comp doesn’t and with all the local support the comp gets it can only get bigger and better each year!

Thanks to got out to the following people for making this a great weekend!
Mission Kayaks – Turns out that the trip down had caused Sean’s transducer to pop off his hull, the Mission guys gave Sean a tube of silicon to stick it back down, worked a treat guys!
Comp organisers – A well organised and well run comp, I’m sure I’ll be back
Viking Kayaks – Well without these guys I simply wouldn’t have been there – THANK YOU
Sean (and family) – I was looked after all weekend by you guys, I never expected to be fed and watered all weekend, thanks

Cheers, Mental

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