Back For Some More Salmon

Today was a day we were going walk up to the Asbestos Hut which is up the Cobb Valley, however with the cold front blasting its way up the South Island it would not have been a nice tramp in and out so opted to attempt the walk tomorrow when the weather would be a lot better. Today will be an easy day with a return to the Anatoki Salmon Farm for more salmon fishing and brunch.

We arrived at 1130hrs and there was no one else there so it looked like we’d be the only ones fishing. The young lady who greeted us remembered us from Saturday, hmmm we must be an impressionable couple 🤣😂. She gave us a rod with a bait nut and a container with chopped up bits of salmon as bait, explaining that due to the water temp being so cold that the salmon get fussy and won’t take the bait nuts. We get the container for our catch which contains the iki spike and head off across to the small lake (or big pond) and Jude starts casting out. We can see that there are plenty of Salmon who are attracted by anything that hits the water… except they wouldn’t take the bait but on Judes line or the salmon pieces. Me being me decided that the bait nut wasn’t close enough to the end of the barb and ended up breaking the nut off and of course couldn’t get it back on.

I ended up going back to the store and asking for bait nuts which they were a little reluctant to give me any, however I gave them the impression I was going to nag them until they did and it worked.

The young man that did all the filleting, sashimi and fillet smoking came along and as there were a few more people fishing by this time and offered a few tips on how to attract the salmon by tensioning and jerking the line float to creat a splash which did indeed attract them, however they were not interested in taking the bait…. After a while Jude had a couple take the bait but they quickly spat out the bait and hook she believes the hook was blunt. By this time Jude thought I might as well have a go and I moved to where I thought the wind which was strong enough to blow the float quickly to shore would favor keeping the float out. Within 10 minutes I had a good strike and it felt like it was a reasonable size. It was awesome fun playing this beauty in and I was quite surprised at how powerful these fish were. In the end I got it close enough for Jude to net.

Took the catch to the weigh in and it came in at 2.112 kg and Jude asked for half to be sashimi and half to be smoked. As the poor thing was still occasionally flapping around We were told how to correctly iki the salmon of which we were told two days ago and if done correctly the eyes drop downward… never worked for us and today learnt that you do it from the from the front pushing the iki between the eyes and aim for the spine.

While the Salmon we caught was being processed Jude and I enjoyed a Salmon, cheese and caper pizza and Coffee. Once brunch was finished they gave us our prepared salmon and it was off back to Pohara for a stroll along the beach… on the way out Jude trips on a slightly raised piece of concrete as we were leaving crashing to the ground with a thud skinning her knees, impacting the concrete with her wrists and to her credit she managed to keep the smoked salmon in a pizza sized box up and level… guess what was for evening dinner?