Ocean Beach, Palliser Bay

I haven’t blogged about fishing in ages, mainly because I haven’t gone, although Podna and I did go to Mahenga Bay last weekend and had a very pleasant evening under the stars.

I mentioned to him that I’d like to drive our 4WD somewhere interesting before I go, not because I’m a huge off-roading fan particularly, but it’s something I’m unlikely to do in my near future, and for an English girl it is kinda groovy.  So yesterday we packed a picnic supper and took off to Ocean Beach in Palliser Bay.

We’ve never actually made it there before although we have tried.  We bottled out because we weren’t sure of the way and the road that we thought it was looked like private land.  Anyway we got confirmation from someone wot knows the other week, so the weather looked so fab that we thought we’d give it a go.

Ocean Spray, our 4WD, is running very well at the moment, needed a ball joint replacing at its service but otherwise goes like a train.  And the spit along the bottom of Lake Onoke was almost wind-free, if you can believe that.  All the times we’ve been over to Palliser bay, including some very enjoyable times at Whangaimoana Beach a bit further along, there’s been at least a 10-15k wind.  When it’s offshore it’s not too bad, but I will say wind-free is sooooo much better.  We got there at about 5pm and it was sunny and warm enough for me to take my coat off and very pleasant indeed.

It was completely deserted, we had the place to ourselves.  I was using my “new” rod. I call it “new” – it’s about a year old but I’ve hardly used it.  It’s a high-quality carbon fibre rod and I’m supposed to be able to cast a long way with it, especially as we combined it with a long-cast reel (at vast expense) but to maximise the casting ability (we were working on a theme, you see, how to get me to cast further) we loaded it with very fine line (the lighter the line, the longer the cast, sort-of).  This fine line hurt my baby-soft fingertips and put me off the whole thing.

Anyway Podna had loaded the reel up with heavier line so I gave it a go.  And I didn’t do too badly despite being out of practice.  And although I didn’t cast that often – I went back to the car to make our dinner on our portable grill on our tailgate – a tailgate party for two – I did catch two spiny dogfish on one cast.  Woohoo!  Podna also caught several spiny dogfish and some red cod.  It was a good day, plenty of action, a lot of fun.

It was great to be out in the clean air and the fabulously clean water with the white white surf.  Will miss that, will definitely miss that, didn’t realise until recently how much I would.