Snapper!

Weekend last, Rich headed out on a fishing charter with a couple of colleagues (and about 15 other people!). An early start as we had to be at the docks by 6.45 and so up around 5.50-on a Sunday!

Quite a cold day, especially out of the sun. Good job we had many layers on and thankfully it remained dry all day.

Was told to expect to come home stinking of fish and to wear some old clothes - since we ditched all the old clothes before heading to NZ I had to go out and buy some old clothes.

First time I've been fishing as I recall. We headed out about one and half hours, erm, sail and dropped anchor.

Had a quick lesson on how cut up the bait (Pilchard) and how to bait hooks so that it does not fall off (hook around the backbone) and then we were off.

In no time somebody had landed a small Trevailly, not good eating apparently, but unfortunately for the fish, legal size and promptly cut up for bait.

First fish landed that was legal size was a Red Snapper. Unfortunately our skipper had not told us how to take the fish off the hooks, or, how to kill them. Pretty important stuff really.

The hooks are pushed out and can be tricky to do. The fish are killed, not by whacking the heads on the deck as some of us thought, but by inserting a knife into their brains.

Unfortunately, one clueless group of four where not even aware they had to kill the fish and were ready to chuck them straight in the cooler. And despite further instruction, they never got the hang of it and many fish suffered an agonising death at their hands.

One of the four, early on, was trying to kill the fish by "suffocating" it with a rag; before thinking about stomping on it's head.

Was very disappointed with the skipper by this point, who turned out to a bit of an arse, more interested in making sure he got his fair share than making sure everybody knew what they were doing and indeed, the welfare of the fish.

Don't want to sound like a bleeding heart, but in my opinion, if you are are going to hunt, or fish you should respect the life of the animal you are taking and give it as quick and humane a death as possible.

What made it worse was that it turned out that many of those on board had no intention of taking the fish home with them, they were just landing them for sport and then butchering them. It was pretty grim, seeing how many fish were being chucked into the cooler still alive.

I could see little point in this and once I had a couple I threw the rest back. Two was easily enough for me considering Amanda does not eat fish and at that point I had no idea how to gut and fillet them.

In all I landed 3 Snapper and 3 Kahawai. Learnt how to gut and fillet the two Snapper I took home via youtube and had sautéed snapper as a starter that night. Yum! The larger one is in the freezer ready to baked.

We moved around a few times, changing location when the fish stopped biting and ened up about 2 and half hours from home.

One of the highlights was cathcing glimpses of dolphins by the boat; and fishing near a huge flock of gannets or the like and watching them dive into the water for fish.

Great to eat fish you have caught yourself - I'd do it again - just not with that skipper and ideally a smaller crew, who had a little more respect for the fish...