As it turned out, the weather improved on the last day of the 3 day weekend (just like home) and we headed for Kai Iwi lakes. This coincided perfectly with all the water skiers, jet skiers, volley ballers et al, throwing all their waterlogged stuff in their trailers and heading back to Auckland. This left only us and one other old couple. Peace and quiet; what a drag. We hastily set up camp and headed down to the lake.
Worst kitchen I've had since we got here:
Kai Iwi lakes are deep sand dune lakes. From the second picture you can see that the trick to fishing it from shore is to wade out far enough that you can cast over the littoral zone. This means wading out at least to your thermometer. In many places you can't get there. But there are places that are shallow enough that you can get to the drop off.
A couple we met on the beach gave us directions to a guy's house that lives by the lake. They told us to just go up and knock on his door and ask him about fishing the lake. We did and were told that it was too late in the year. All the big fish were down deep because the water is heating up. If we caught anything, it would be a small one; probably only 2 to 2.5 kilos (um, thats 4.4 to 5.5 pounds!). His parting piece of advice was that if the fish were biting, I might catch one.
The first night the wind was still blowing pretty hard. I went to a semi sheltered area and waded out to my dangly bits. With the wind at my back, my casting looked like I was whipping a mule team. I could only stay in the water for about 45 minutes before my fingers quit working, and my wife started mother-henning. Bottom line is between that evening and the next morning, I caught 2.5 fish in 1.5 hours (the .5 snapped my fly off). None of which came half way up to the small category. Maybe they were somebody's live bait that got loose. The next morning it was threatening to rain again so we vamoosed.
Between fishing and not fishing, we went to Manganui Bluff beach. All beaches in NZ are considered state highways. You can drive the full length of 90 mile beach (60 miles). We went down at low tide to pick mussels. There are tour buses that cart Asians up here just to pillage the beach. It's like an ant farm. There's usually at least one burly Maori on the beach quite willing to give them a conservation lesson. Even though there is no legal minimum size limit, the Maori urge not taking any mussel smaller than the width of your palm. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
On the road to the beach:
Plenty for all...
We came across this cheerful little feller on the beach. There had been people criss-crossing all day. Then he just yawns and starts shuffling on down to the water.
I got close enough to piss him off. I thought I was able to get a picture of the fangs in his gaping maw, but all I got was a blurred image as I bolted like a little girl.
Total trip cost to date: $11,626.51 USD
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