Coming of age!

This fishing trip started off a while back with underwater cameraman Steve Hathaway getting in touch about his fishing mad son Lucas, and getting him out on a fishing charter. This was a coming off age pressie from his Aunty, who was shouting him the trip and brought him down to Tairua for the weekend, thanks Aunty!

When his Aunty Shaz got int touch to sort the final details, it was one of those New Zealand is a small country moments - “Hey Carl, its Shaz - I was on the Rongoa course with you last week -I’m Steve’s sister!”

Small world - or the universe doing its thing?

Fast forward to the day itself - The mission was to catch Lucas his first kingi. I had put the word out for two more to join and got a starter, Tony McKenzie, who’s fished with me many times a year for about 15 years straight. With well over 40 trips , Tony has this uncanny ability to come on the very good days and this was one of them, maybe he just brings his little bit of magic along. I made the call to jig, and headed straight out to a warm up spot, half way out to get Lucas in the groove and make sure he was comfortable with how we were fishing. With a small fish dealt to very quickly on the first drop “you’re ready bro, let’s go” . First drop out wide and Tony hooks a freight train that smoked off a huge amount of line at heavy drag, there was a bit of boatwork and good angling and up popped the biggest , longest kingi I’ve seen in a long time. Tony still has the stoke, a very happy man!

With the master showing how it’s done, Then it was Lucas turn, hooked up straight away and pinned on the rail, doing a great job and landing his first kingfish.

Then lining up every drift and released half a dozen more fish by midday. Solid effort jigging! Aunty Shaz got a taste of the power of one and retired to snapper fishing. With our kai, one kingi each, in the bin, we were home with plenty of time to get our fish processed back home & enjoy the fruits of a big day on the water. Awesome day in good company and special note to a fine young man , Nice work Lucas!

We finished the day off with some of our own manaakitanga, Shaz and Lucas were travelling in a van, so we invited them up home for a kai and somewhere to park up for the night, 3 courses of kingi and sharing tales of an epic day young Lucas will never forget!