Sea fishing in Auckland

Went fishing last night with my new work mates on our "company boat". I've never been on a (powered) boat before and my first thought was of how dangerous it could all be. Terry is the ad manager of Trade-A-Boat magazine, a big Tongan geezer with 12 years deep sea fishing experience and understandably our skipper for the evening.

He insisted we all wear our life jackets, and warned us that pulling the self-inflate tags on our life vests would cost us $45 - for the recharge. He really got into the safety talk - telling us where flares were and SOS procedures should he be "rendered unconscious". Worrying stuff.

We poodled along out of the harbour and into the Hauraki Gulf at which point Terry hit the accelerator - or whatever the boat equivalent is. At this point I started to worry - which increased tenfold when we hit a big wave and I was propelled 6 inches out of my seat and 8 inches towards the rear of the boat. I dove to the floor in (the now infamous) starfish position and waited for the boat to settle.

We headed out to a GPS position Terry had been to before and checked the fish finder - which showed a decent amount of fish for a short session. In goes the rods of the four of us and within seconds Terry has a decent sized snapper. Shortly afterwards, Chris pulled out and even bigger one. Grant & I caught nought for a couple of hours.

By the time darkness was creeping in, I had caught one snapper (so small we had to throw it back), Grant had caught some decent sized ones and we were cooking sausages on the BBQ, drinking beer and singing to a mixture of crap Kiwiana music and Bob Marley - it was fantastic.

The evening ended too soon, but we packed up and prepared to head home - at which point Terry leaned over and yanked my inflate tag. Apparently the look on my face was priceless as I genuinely believed this Tongan was going to throw me overboard; not realising I couldn't swim! Still, it cost the git $45 - we're going to stick it up on the wall in the office.

The lifevest gets bloody tight, but I discovered that you can perfectly balance a bottle of beer in between the lungs of it and drink and hold on for dear life at the same time. All in all, it was one of the best evenings I've had - and I can't wait to go again...