Trip Report Josh and Thumper hit New Zealand

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

This was going to go to a magazine but the pictures just aren't high enough res. All we had was our cell phones but I wrote most of the article when I was bored down there anyways. I figured I'd Pass it along to others who might enjoy it.

Pics to follow in posts below


Christmas Day most people spend lounging around the house with relatives, enjoying a big Christmas dinner and opening gifts. Me? I spent Christmas day desperately trying to finish packing my gear and make it to LAX on time to catch a flight that would take me to Auckland via Fiji.
When I arrived 26 hours later in Auckland my grandmother was waiting for me and I somehow managed to cram all my gear into her tiny little sedan, after a few days getting my bearings I hopped on a ferry to Waiheke island to stay with some friends of my cousin for New Years. When I arrived at the house and looked over the cliff I could see clear water and what even looked like some pinnacles off a quarter mile or so up the island. I asked my new friend’s mother if she ever saw any kingfish out at the pinnacles. Her response “oh yeah I run into kingfish every now and then when I snorkel out there”.

Pumped to finally be getting a dive in I trekked down the steep windy track to the beach, tossed my stuff in a kayak and headed out to “the needles”. After looking around shallow for snapper for a while I decided to head up current and off the structure to see if I could get lucky with a kingy. I dove my way out to where the structure completely ended and faded into sand, at about 45’. On my second drop at the edge I was coming back up from the bottom when I got schooled. I get total tunnel vision on the closest fish to me and take my shot with my 90. Blam, fish rolls over dead and as I break the surface I have a small school of kingies circling my fins, some of which look over 40lbs. I can’t be too mad at myself though, first hour in the water and I’ve already stoned a kingfish? The trip is already starting to look like it’s going to be a good one. I spent another hour doing drops on the spot and getting buzzed by kingfish in the same size class I had already shot. On my way back to the kayak I did one final drop and managed to pull a cray out of a hole. Climbing up the track back to the house in full gear with a fish was one hell of a workout but was oh so worth it.
New Year’s eve I teamed up with a tank diver to go grab some scallops. The scallop beds he dives sit in about 60’ of water, I think I had only managed to grab half of my limit freediving for them by the time he had collected limits for the boat in about 10 minutes on a tank. These scallops are a lot different from the ones we get in California, they don’t attach themselves to the rocks and can actual squirt away from you to some extent. That being said they aren’t exactly a challenge to hunt but are some of the tastiest things the waters of New Zealand has to offer.
That night we BBQ’d garlic butter scallops on the half shell and decimated an entire kingfish. As the ball dropped I took a sip of my Mexican beer then got nearly leveled by two of my new friends who gave me a fat kiss on the cheek. They laughed and said “bet you didn’t think your first kisses of the year would be from two dudes did you?!?!” (no homo)
2012 finished strong and I was set to pick up Tyler from the airport in a few days and really the kick fish killing into high gear.

Tyler arrived early in the morning a few days after New Year’s. From the airport we headed back to my grandmother’s house to pack the car up then we headed north up the Bay of Islands. The first day we arrived all of the hostels were totally booked up, not too stoked on sleeping in the car we hit up the store for some beer and watched the sunset.
Here’s where things got interesting, according to some of my kiwi friends legend has it there’s a Mori women up in that area with a thing for younger guys. So we’re propped up on this wall drinking when this lady shows up and starts chatting us up, telling us about Mori history and all these cultural stuff. She keeps feeding us these cans of bourbon and cola the entire time. It gets dark and we are getting drunk, for some reason we hit up the store again and buy some more booze. We all walk over to the only bar in town that was going good named the “Pipi patch” (pronounced peepee). In the end she got one of us while the other got to stay in the bays nicest hotel for the night.
So after an absolute train wreck of a night (for one) we drove over to Russel, pumped up our dingy and finally got in the water. Pretty clean water greeted us and after kicking around for a bit Tyler had managed to shoot his first kingfish of the trip, I had spent the entire day trying to snoop out some snapper, the name the kiwis have given to the art of stalking snapper and came up with a stringer of pan sized fish.
The next day we had a managed to get ourselves onto Andy’s boat to have ourselves a go at diving at some of the inner islands in the bay. We loaded up early and Me, Tyler, and 4 other divers were off in the 23’ aluminum center consol. We started the day by dropping off divers at different points on different islands to give everyone plenty of ground to cover in hopes of snooping up some snapper. When it was my turn to get in the water I did my best to emulate the things I had been told about how to properly snoop out these incredibly wary fish, move slowly, never make any noise, and always come over the top of objects with just your eyes to check for fish. After the first half of an hour I had seen nothing when a kingfish swam past me, I blew out my air sunk and gave my band a strum. Sure enough the fish made a turn and came back close enough to stone him with the 90. Happy that I had gotten a kingy I spent another hour snooping my ass off for not even the sight of a snapper. When the boat came to pick me up Andy’s son had shot himself a very nice fish up in the shallows on one of the other islands, about 24 pounds when we weighed it at the end of the day, an absolute monster that the pic does no justice to.
After spending the morning snooping we headed out to an island that never quite made it to the surface, walls of blue maomao and kahawai greeted us as we entered the water. I spent the dive enjoying exploring the high spot and enjoying the conditions, I ran into one school kingfish but decided to spare them as I already had one in the box. Meanwhile Tyler had managed to shoot himself a kingy before we called it a day and headed for the barn.
The next day we drove north, hopped in the little dingy and putted for about 45 minutes till we made it to an island. Diving whatever island it was, was great, clear water and lively. Determined to try and snoop up some snapper I made my way out slowly to a high spot that broke the surface, I spied what appeared to be a large dropoff in the distance so I breathed up, made a dive and made my approach. As my eyes cleared the top of the reef I spotted a large shape mulling around at the bottom of the ledge, I looked away quickly, keeping the fish in my peripheral while slowly bringing the gun out from behind me. Gun extended I looked back to the fish, lined up my shot and watched as he locked eyes with me but it was too late and after a short fight I held what would be my second biggest snapper of the trip in my hands. Absolutely stoked I slid the fish onto my float line, reloaded, and started back to the boat. Moving slowly I came up to what looked like the top of an old lava vent, Luckily the sun was at my back and the big snapper sitting in the tube couldn’t see me. I took a quick instinctive shot and stoned the fish, to my surprise another, much bigger fish exploded out of the grass bordering the hole. Absolutely stoked on my two big fish I swam back to the boat and we ended up calling it a day soon after.
The next morning we were back in pahia loading back up onto Andy’s boat for a run out to Cape Brett and the hole in the rock. After a stunning boat ride through the islands of the bay we made it out just past Cape Brett to the hole in the rock to try for some better grade kingfish. The spot is notorious for insane current and Andy tells us that sometimes you even have to climb on top of your float and swim freestyle in order to make it back to the boat. The spot is just a sheer rock face that comes up from about 100ft and keeps going after clearing the surface. Getting in the water the current was ripping like crazy, apparently what is considered normal for the spot. My routine was make a drop down to about 70-75 where the fish were supposed to be hanging out, get pushed a few hundred feet down current then hug the wall to escape the majority of the current and beat back into the current and do it all again. For all the effort I saw zero kingies. The boat ended up with a bunch of trevally and a few pink maomao aka “widowmakers” due to how the fish like to let you keep chasing them down into oblivion for a shot.
When pulling the hook I slipped and absolutely ate crap, falling halfway into the anchor locker and getting put almost completely out of commission for the day. That was painful, learned a lesson on where not to stand while pulling Andy’s anchor however. At the next high spot just off the Cape the guys got in and started seeing some good fish and it wasn’t long before Tyler and one of the other divers shot themselves nice 40lb class kingies. I tried to suck it up and get in on the action but my run in with the anchor locker was killing my breath hold and my diving was sucking. Meanwhile Tyler bagged himself another nice fish and at the end of the day even let me hold it for the group picture. On our way back in we stopped at a spot to dive for some scallops and after finding the beds the group made quick work of grabbing limits.
Saying goodbye to Pahia we traveled back to Auckland for a night or two of shenanigans and womanizing. We then headed north again about and hour and a half to a random point we thought looked good from the satellites. When we got to wherever we wound up that night we were pretty lost and passed out in the car. The next morning we woke up to find that we were in the right place but the park ranger was not happy about us breaking the rule of no sleeping inside cars in the park. After Tyler attempted to nap on the beach with me not allowing it to happen we geared up and motored for almost an hour to get to the first spot which turned out to be lifeless. We pushed on and eventually found an area with a couple fish and Tyler managed to shoot a pair of nice snapper for the day.
With our fish and gear we loaded up and drove north looking to find some grub. We came across a small rugby club with a sign that read “takeaways” so we drove down to the clubhouse and Tyler ran in to see if they were still serving food. This stop for food ended up leading to vastly improving our trip as Tyler came back and said they would cook up our fish for free if they could have the leftovers and the carcasses for soup, not only that but one of the bar patrons told us that we were welcome to use his spare bedroom for free and told us that the fishing out of the port a kilometer down the road was quite good.
Stoked to have free accommodation we all had some real NZ fish and chips and followed our host Kelly back to his house. The “lock” to their front door was a rock that you prop up behind the door and the house only had like 3 working light bulbs, we got absolutely demolished by mosquitos all night long but Kelly and his family were awesome hosts and I plan on staying with em again the next time I go down.
We got up the next morning, drove down to the local wharf, got suited up and charged north up the coast. We stopped at a point that looked decent and scoured the inside for fish. I ended up shooting a squid which I thought was pretty cool. After seeing almost nothing on the inside I decided to swim out of the point in hoped of finding some new habitat. After a swim out of the main headlands I hit the jackpot, a series of pinnacles happened to come into my view. I made drops doing long aspettos on the edges of the pinnacles for about an hour, after seeing nothing I finally gave into my urges and pulled the trigger on a butterfish. As I slowly kicked to the surface pulling the fish in, as if on cue a big school of kingies with a few fish in the 50lb range came into view, followed me up from the bottom, then proceeded to swim circles around me just long enough for me to remove the butterfish and almost finish reloading.
With renewed focus I pushed out off the pinnacles I had been diving and swam further out, here I found another pin that happened to be a full 20ft deeper to the top. I set up on the structure and started back to my aspetto’s. On the third or fourth dive as I was halfway buried in the weeds strumming my bands I slowly looked to my right scanning for fish, then slowly scanned back all the way to my left where I came face to face with a big bronze whaler charging me at mach 5. I just had enough time to position the gun in between the both of us when he ran into the spear tip then took off, now in California we hardly ever see sharks, let alone interact with them so when this happened I almost shit my suit. Heart going a million miles an hour I let go of the rock and slowly kicked back to the surface, then slowly made my way in the direction of the boat with my head on a swivel like it had never been on a swivel before. When I finally made it to the boat I made on hell of an ungraceful exit and yelled to Tyler that there was a shark. After a small pep talk we teamed up and started diving the first pinnacle I had seen fish on earlier together. Sure enough the shark found us again and Tyler got buzzed sitting on the pinnacle the same way I had, now that we were expecting it we didn’t tuck tail and run back to the boat. Instead we kept making our drops and we started seeing fish. It wasn’t long before we each had shot a kingie and called it a day.

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

The next day we motored back up the coast and tossed the hook right on top of one of the pinnacles and got to diving. The current was pushing north bringing in clear water and it felt fishy. It wasn’t long before the kingies started breezing the high spot. Sitting on the tops of the pinnacles, strumming the bands the fish would come in from all directions and it didn’t take long for us to pick a few off. On a whim I kicked out to the furthest pinnacle to try my luck again, after a few dives sure enough what looked like the same shark pulled the exact same stunt, this time I wasn’t surprised and gave him a poke on the nose, as he turned to swim off I noticed a kingie was swimming with him, looking almost as if he was hiding underneath the shark, so I raised the gun and took my shot. The fish rolled over dead and the shark swam off completely unaware. I tossed my fish into the boat just as Tyler was putting the hurt on another kingie too. We already had a few fish in the boat and we got worried about the fish going off in the sun so Tyler was elected to go stash them in the shallows somewhere out of the reach of sharks and to protect them from going off. I went back to one of the pinnacles and started making drops again, Tyler then joined me too quickly after.
“dude where are the fish”
“ah I just strung em up on a line off the back of the boat”
“those fish are going to get so eaten dude”
“nah they’ll be alright”
After another few drops Tyler decided that I might be right about the sharks and swam back to the boat. Now apparently as he swam back and the boat and fish came into his view what he described as the biggest mako he had ever seen came up to the fish and in one bite ate the majority of 35 pound or so kingie and didn’t even slow down. I guess he then got into the boat and got the fish in before the shark came back then yelled to me with eyes looking like dinner plates.
“holy ****ing shit dude theres a big ****ing shark in the water”
“what like a big bronzie or something?”
“no like a giant mako” and proceeds to hold up what was left of one of the fish
With my butt now totally puckered I swam back to the boat where we sat around and for a few and worked ourselves back up to round out our limits of kingfish for the day. We ended up getting back in and getting our 3 kingfish each for the day and Tyler also held a long aspetto and managed to shoot a beast of a snapper who popped his head out of the weeds at the wrong time. On the way back to the ramp we stopped off at an awesome looking yacht that had Newport Rode Island painted on the back, we stopped off had a chat with the guy who had spent a year and a half getting here from Newport and gave him a fish. Our host Kelly couldn’t even believe it when we showed up to his house with our catch, we gave it all to him as a way of saying thanks and we were off to the next destination. Via text message the next night Kelly informed us that he and his extended family finished off what was easily 100 pounds of fish, minds=blown.
We then headed down to lake Taupo to meet up with Louie the Fish Denolfo, a friend of a captain the both of us had worked for back in southern California with the idea of catching some trout. We spent a week destroying huge 3-10 pound rainbows and browns on neon colored fuzz ball flies called “glowbugs” on 30 dollar kiddy fishing rods. We also did some spearfishing in the lake for the invasive catfish. All I can is wild smoked New Zealand trout is mind blowing, the big catfish fry we had for dinner one night was also beyond good.
After what was essentially a week of relaxing we drove down to the Capital of NZ for the annual sevens rugby tournament, an event that was described as “like Halloween for you Americans but with much more drinking”. After a long drive we found ourselves in wellington, parked the car in huge garage and went to bed sitting up in the front seats (we would later be kicked out of this parking garage for sleeping in the car and showering using water bottles next to the car). The next day we got up and talked to the owner of a local fishing shop about where we might go about popping ourselves a few paua. He pointed us to about an hour’s drive from the city and said to have a look around.
When we finally pulled up to what looked like a decent enough spot it looked pretty unappealing compared to everywhere else we had dove, windy as hell, brown water, and it was raining to boot. Begrudgingly we got out of the safety of the dry warm car and slid into our cold suits. When we walked the 100 or so meters down to the water the first thought that came to my mind was, “wow this water is cold and dirty”. Swimming out through the surf the viz was a depressing meter or less. However just outside the surf it opened up to about 2 meters of viz with really good looking structure and some of the strangest kelp I had ever seen. This kelp felt almost exactly like you cut kelp shapes out of carpet then anchored it to the bottom, super thick and very heavy. After taking in the new scenery for a few minutes we got to searching for paua. It wasn’t long before I started seeing legals everywhere; they were so thick in spots that there were paua stacked on top of other paua. I think it took us less than half an hour to pick our limit and make it back to the car.
The next day we hit up the local novelty shop for bodypaint and American flags, painted ourselves and caped up. The night turned out to be a total shitshow with one of us ending up in the tank and one of us losing a phone and having to walk a few hours back into town somehow. The next night was much more enjoyable and sane, and the crowds were about 10 times the size they were the night before. We met a lot of cool people in wellington, it was a fun stop.
Leaving wellington we drove northeast out to the east cape where rumors of big fish run rampant. After driving a full two hours out of cell phone coverage we turned down a small farm road, drove through pen after pen of livestock and eventually found ourselves on an awesome looking beach, we drove about 30 or 40 meters from a “no camping” sign and set up our camp. There happened to be a small beat up aluminum boat full of some maori guys who were out diving for kina and paua coming in just as we finished, after a talk they said to run out to the point to try for the kingies.
The next morning we were up early, and there were a few Asian fellows down at the shoreline fishing with what looked like marlin gear, apparently they were trying to catch some of the huge stingrays that lived in the area, they told us to shoot them one if we could. Laughing about shooting a huge ray we then blew up the boat and charged it out to the point in the distance. When we got out to the point and tried to throw the hook it didn’t hit bottom the first time, just how quickly this spot dropped off from dry land to the abyss was insane. It didn’t take us long to anchor the boat precariously close to the rocks and get to diving though. The spot turned out to be insane, you could have your hand touching shore and at the same time be looking down into 20 meters of water, prime location for big fish. After swimming around for about 10 minutes taking in the scenery I made a lazy dive into a massive school of blue maomao and drifted with the fish and the current. A nice kingfish lazily swam up current to check me out, when he came within range I stoned him and made the retrieve all on the same dive. Tyler wasn’t long behind in putting the hurt on a nice kingfish either, soon there were a pair of quality fish lying side by side in the boat. The current had changed up on us bringing in some dirty water so we moved back inside the bay a bit where Tyler got into another good fish, unfortunately bending the hell out of his shaft in the process.
Just inside of us there was a cove that looked great to snap a picture or two so we headed into the beach for a photo op. There was a small cave dripping water at the back of the cove, thinking nothing of it we got out. Apparently that cave was the mother of all mosquito breeding grounds, After unloading the fish we were being eaten alive, the mosquitos were covering our wetsuits and biting our faces, In one of the pictures you can even see a black dot on tylers forehead where a mosquito is eating him as he is trying to pose for a picture. It took about 10 minutes for us to be completely over the cove we would call “mosquito farm beach” and we threw the fish back into the boat. When motoring out of the cove in about a meter and a half of water with mosquitos chasing us tyler sees a huge stingray swimming below the boat and tells me to clip off a floatline to his totaled shaft. I snap on a line and tyler goes at this stingray full on caveman style and manages to ram the shaft into the rays head. The shaft then took off for open ocean sticking a few feet out of the water towing us and the small boat at speeds high enough to where we had a small wake going. Eventually the ray got tired and we motored back into mosquito farm beach to deal with it. After a few swift blows with a log the stingray was down for the count and we went running from the mosquitos dragging the ray along with us.
Hoping to shoot a snapper we anchored the boat again in a spot that looked good enough and we went to work. Tyler went off looking for paua while I broke open a bunch of kina (urchin) to see if I could bring in some snapper on the burley pile. Swimming away from my burley trying to snoop a snapper up I ran into this huge octopus hiding in a depression in the rocks. I thought to myself “f it” and dove down and did battle with the creature, eventually getting him off the rocks. Then there was the problem of actually killing the thing, its head was too big to bite hawaiin style so with the octopus wrapping itself all over one of my arms, my face, and my body I somehow managed to feel out the lump that was his brain and after smashing him as hard as I could into one of the weights on my belt he lost almost all his fight, I swam down and put his head against a flat rock and finished him off with the butt of my gun after that. Coming back to the area where I set my burley I made a dive from a long distance away, located the ledge and peeked my head over, sure enough a snapper was picking at the kina and I put a good shot on him.
Coming into the beach we were just in time as the Asian guys were just packing up, they were pretty stoked on the stingray and tossed it into the back of their truck and headed for home while we got to making ourselves a camp fire and showering in the tiny little stream that crossed the road leading down to the beach.
Now was when we found out exactly how bad the mosquitos were out on the east cape, it was as if they all flew from “mosquito farm beach” right back to our campsite. I’ve never seen mosquitos the size of the ones that were out on the East Cape nor ones that left as big a bite. As the week went on we discovered that these things would be out at high noon on the beach in the sun, you could only get away from them if you were underwater it seemed like.
The next day was almost a repeat of the first, right back out to the point to dive for kingies. However the current was slack and we saw much fewer fish. We ended up with a kingie each and also managed to shoot up the trevally and blue moki as well. Coming back to the beach that day was when we happened to meet some local farmers and some of their family who were staying at their friends house down by the beach for a week. Apparently they lived on a 50,000 acre farm in a valley not too far of a drive away. We loaded them up with fish and they told us to come have dinner and a shower at their place. This would become our ritual for the next few days, come in load the farmers deep freezer with fish, take a shower, enjoy a home cooked meal and entertain their two little boys who were awesome kids as best we could. Spending time with their family and eating their awesome food made the trip out to the east cape about 100 times better (also that warm shower, oh maaaan was that good)
Day three we headed out to the point again but it was completely dead, no current, dirty water, no fish. So we headed back into the bay a little bit in hoped of finding some suitable structure, after diving here and there for a while we found a spot that looked great, it was a vertical drop from dry land to about 25 meters deep which went out for about 10 or 15 meters then came right back up to about 10 meters. We spent the day exploring what was essentially a gigantic channel with a gradual sloping high spot to outline it. We had a few sightings of kingies but the current was almost dead all day so it wasn’t looking too good. I was breathing up on the surface when I saw what looked like a nice king swim under me, I blew out my air, sank a few feet and rolled him dead. Meanwhile tyler while doing an aspetto over on the edge of the channel shot a pair of these big red cod that live inside caves and cracks that happened to be hiding in a hole in the rocks right next to his perch. After dumping off our fish in the boat tyler took off to go search for some paua while I took out my 90 to see if I could nail some reefies. Doing aspettos in the weeds at about 13 meters it wasn’t long before I had shot myself a butterfish, some blue cod and a blue moki. Swimming back to the boat I took a peak into a cave and also managed to put a red cod onto my stringer. Tyler had good luck with the paua too and managed a half limit.

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

Day 4 we left the beach earlier in hopes of catching our new spot with some current moving, our farmer friends were also leaving the next day so we were going to do our best to plug them with fish as best we could. Now the single band beat to hell 90cm I use I bought on a trip down to NZ years ago when I was starting to really get into diving and today my plan was to see if I could shoot a limit of kingies with just that gun. When we threw the hook on our spot the water looked really clear and the current looked like it was moving. When we got in I started making drops at the edge of the channel, I found the perfect perch with one piece of kelp to hold onto just at the sheerest part of the wall. After a few dives of banging my run against the rocks and strumming the band I looked left to see a few nice kingies swimming away, when I broke the surface tyler informed me that the fish swam over my legs so close I would have kicked them if I would have moved. Knowing the fish were here I stuck to my spot and on the very next dive a big school of kingies swam up out of the trench to say hi, I picked out one of the bigger fish and let him have it, the shaft hit him right behind the head and he went limp, good thing too because the shaft didn’t penetrate deep enough for the barb to engage. As I swam to the surface the school followed me up chasing their dead friend. I swam back to the boat tossed my fish in and swam right back to my spot, on the very first dive back at it a trio of fish came into view and I let the closest fish to me ha e it, the shot was solid and he didn’t put up much of a fight before I had in in my hands. With two of my fish and one of tylers already in the boat I decided to swim them in up in the shallows to keep them from the sun. With my gun under my arm a fish in between my legs and one in each hand I pushed off of the boat when a pair of the biggest kingies I had ever seen swam right under my feet, these fish looked huge, easily over 75lbs. I let go of the fish in my right hand and tried to make a dive with a kingie still in my left hand and between my legs while pulling the gun out for a shot, it just didn’t work at all and the monster fish just kept cruising. I managed to grab the one fish I had dropped easily enough and swam them in and strung em up to some kelp, just goes to show murphy’s law almost always holds true when you’re trying to shoot fish.
When I swam back out to my spot I made dives for almost an hour and saw no fish, I swam across the small canyon to the shore side where tyler had been seeing fish and started making drops and I eventually rolled over another kingie to round out my limit for the day.
It was still pretty early in the day so I grabbed a paua gauge and went to work in the shallows, getting into all the cracks and crevices popping paua one by one off the rocks and shoving them up under my wetsuit for safe keeping. About halfway through my limit I found a small opening in the face of a wall that looked like it went way back, after working in past my fin tips and letting my eyes adjust I was within range of two crays and managed to just barely get the grab on the closer one. After I dropped off the cray and my half limit I went back into the shallows finished out my limit and blasted some reefies. Going back to the beach at the end of the day with limits of kings and paua for two plus the odd cray and some reefies we nearly sank the poor little boat.
We loaded up our farmer friends for the last time and in return gave us as much wild venison as we could eat in the next few days and headed back to the farm. All I can say is that wild New Zealand deer filet is mind blowing. Best trade we had ever made.
Our last day of diving at out at the cape on this trip we piled into our trusty rubber duck and charged back out to the point. The swell was way up today and the wind was starting to pick up as well. Diving just off the rocks I made a dive and hovered at about 25ft staring at the bottom hoping to see a snapper or a king swim into view, sitting motionless for over a minute I made my way back up and could see tylers wide eyes before I even made it to the surface.
“Holy shit did you see that shark!?!??”
“what shark?”
Apparently as I was sitting there hovering in the current when out from the deep a white shark in the 12-14ft range came in my backside and charged me, turning away within arms reach, then circling up and around me into the white wash from the rocks momentarily disappearing out of Tyler’s view only to charge back out of the white wash to have another go at me before finally disappearing back into the blue. Just goes to show that no matter how connected with the ocean you feel a creature the size of a small car can get within arms reach without you noticing.
Due to the lack of fish, deteriorating weather, and run in with the shark we ran back into the bay to dive our other spot. When we threw the hook and jumped in the current was absolutely ripping. The only way we could dive it was to hold the anchor line and make drops by climbing hand over hand down the line into the current and waiting. As tyler climbed down the line I watched him raise his gun and let go of the line and pull the trigger on a good looking kingfish. By the time he made it back to the surface he was already a good 5 meters behind the boat. I laughed to myself as I watched tyler and his float going out to the horizon and kept doing my drops. During the hour and change it took for tyler to swim back to the boat the current had really backed off enough so I could abandon my perch on the line and work the reef. Towards the end of the dive I ran into a good kingfish and put the hurt on him and we called it a day. After breaking down the camp and loading the car we took off to the bay of plenty, breaking every traffic law imaginable in a successful attempt to get to a burger king before it closed. We passed out in the car full of woppers parked in front of one of New Zealands nicest beaches, a fine end to our east cape adventure

Still to talk about that I didn’t get to but I guess I’ll have to tell it:
Diving local hauraki gulf after tyler left
Diving back out on the east cape for one last day for my biggest king
Diving the cook islands
Last dive of my trip for my biggest snapper

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

Pics

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

craptons more pics to come...

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

Last pic above is the fish the mako got next to my size 13 foot

mas picturas
Me eating a kiwi pie. Greatest things ever, they do make a mess though (what im being given a hard time for)

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

Oh snap the sevens!!
We painted the ones girls back btw...

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

moar

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

Valentines day lol

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

["Yard-Sale Josh"]

I'll put up more later, Going to sleep

[Freedive4life]

F you prickzz

[jtully]

wow... well done