We headed out the mouth of the Hunter River aways to a location on the GPS and dropped anchor. We were using frozen shrimp as bait, two hooks and a sinker to a line. Drop the line to the bottom and wait. As soon as the first line hit the bottom, there was a fish impaled on it, and it began. I caught a fish the first time I dropped my line.
It was not big enough to eat.
I dropped my line again and caught what would end up to be the biggest fish of the day, who informed me he was disappointed with being caught by bleeding all over my boardies. Thanks fish.
A few minutes later, I hooked another monster. It was either a shark or a very large snapper. It took the line out, stronger than the clutch on my reel would hold...there was really nothing I could do. The fish took the line around the reef and cut it on the reef. The line was frayed off when we got it back up. Crafty lil bugger. The skipper informed me that a fish that size would have gone for around $70 had I been able to land it. Oh well.
Speaking of hooking monsters, I grabbed this ugly thing at one point. Rather than unhook him, the skipper just cut the line above him. "I don't mess with eels", he said. We caught three or four of this bright red fish with giant spikes down it's back...apparently extremely poisonous. We let the skipper unhook those for us as well :)
Checking out downtown Newcastle on the way back in.
We ended up keeping 19 fish. I got the big one in the back, one of the ones in the middle, and one of the green/purple leatherjackets up front. They feel like they're made of leather and they have a unicorn spike up top. Lots of interesting colors on these interesting fish way out in the salt water!
We cleaned em and grilled em with some garlic and onions and they were delicious :)
No comments:
Post a Comment