The King Fish

After declaring the Mahurangi bad fishing grounds, the boys were raring to get back to their normal stomping grounds in Leigh to catch some fish.

How's this for a good start to a New Year:

On the evening of the 1st of January, Pete said he was going out fishing.  He "felt like he was going to catch a big one" he told me.  "Whatever" I thought, as usual.  Off he went after putting the girls to bed.  I collapsed on to my own comfortable bed after a hot shower to enjoy an hour or so of quiet reading before dozing off.  Just as I was getting sleepy, the phone rang.  Usually nobody calls us after 8 pm because I am always in bed very early being a pregnant mum of 2 small children.  Someone must have died I thought to myself or why would anyone be phoning us at nearly 9pm (not very late really I know).  Pete, on the other end of the phone, tells me not to go to bed yet (too late for that) that he was coming home with a whopper, a huge kingfish.  See you in 20 minutes he says.  Really?  In 20 minutes I will definitely be asleep.  Well, I stayed awake.  Wrapped up in my robe, I waddled out (no, I'm not that pregnant yet actually but it sounds quite good) to the backyard.  Low and behold it was a pretty mighty fish, weighing in at 15kg.  Check it out.

 Apparently some guys in another boat watched Pete reel in the fish and on his own wrestle it into his very small dinghy.  Before he came home he called in to his mate's house to show off the first big catch of the year, of course. 
Stay tuned in to find out how we managed to get through 15 kg of kingfish flesh in 3 days.  We've calculated that it fed close to 50 people.  It also had 4 decomposed fish in its stomach that Pete used as bait.  With that bait he caught another fish.  I don't know whether that is amazing or disgusting but it certainly is frugality at its best. 
One more interesting thing; the fish was tagged by the Ministry of Fisheries and the tag says reward - please measure and sex.  He joked that he thought about having sex with it but decided against it.