On Saturday morning we were invited out fishing on a friend's boat. Dean picked us up and we were out on a sparkling blue ocean by about 10am. Parked at the eastern end of Whale Island I was the first to reel in a fish which I immediately recognised as a Granddaddy Hapuka. Now a Hapuka is generally a big beastie of a fish so naturally you would assume a Granddaddy one to be an extremely big beastie of a fish. Just my luck they aren't! Actually they are pathetically tiny so my first fish went back into the ocean.

Tiny fish, big gob.
Troy took this photo and you can be forgiven for criticising his photography skills. Under normal circumstances he would have moved around to a better angle and made sure his subject was well lit but to share a secret, well, he's not much of a seadog really. Actually he's a confirmed landlubber so it was a big ask just to get him to lift the camera while the boat heaved and dropped beneath him. To be honest it was a miracle he got through the day without barfing if you go by his previous performances. Good on ya mate!

The cliffs of Whale Island are beautiful sculptural forms tinted with volcanic reds and brown. Before long we started catching snapper but they were very small and only two out of the five we boated were legal size. Three lucky fish went back over the side so we up anchored and headed West towards the Matata coast. We encountered strange areas of red water, an algal bloom perhaps? Dean caught a nice snapper out of the red stuff so we hoped it wasn't a toxic algal bloom!

Below looks like something out of "X-files"...oh no, thats so 90's,.... I meant "Fringe."

As the day went on the sea got more and more calm (luckily for Troy) but alas the fishing didn't improve so we called it quits and headed home. Check out this shot of one of the "Heads" at the Heads. Aaah so thats why they call it the heads!!! It looks like a reclining woman wearing a pohutukawa bikini. If you look really hard you can see the tiny people directly below her chin.