Day 15 – Half Way Point

Well I’ve made it this far at least, yay! So where today? It’s a Saturday so I have the whole day to play with… I’ve had my eye on Elizabeth Reef for a while now after first seeing it from Woolley’s Bay.

So I set off from Ngunguru and start heading towards North Whananaki, takes a little longer than I expected but I’m on the estuary by 9:00am and set off with the tide, that’s a good start!

It’s about a 2.5 km paddle out to the reef and on the way out I can see a few fish heading into the estuary, looked like Kahawai but couldn’t be sure, I threw a bait into the wash on my way out but only managed to hook up on the sea weed…

Heading out to the reef I spy a few fish showing up on the sounder but couldn’t interest them in my softbait so I carried on to the reef. Got there and no sign of any fish on the east side so paddled through to the other side, that sounds easier than it was!

On the other side there was a bit of sign but it just turned out to be reef fish and they soon demolished two or three baits!

The wind had picked up and changed from a NW to a straight North so was soon blowing me off the reef, I decided to just go with the flow for now as the reef wasn’t holding anything I was interested in. As I was drifting there would be the odd fish showing up on the sounder but I just couldn’t get them to bite, you could see them coming up off the bottom to inspect the bait but they weren’t taking it, very frustrating…

To be honest I was just too late, I should have been there at sun up… Anyway now I’m about in line with Sandy bay and about 4 km away from Whananaki and it’s time to head back. It took me over an hour to get back to the estuary entrance, the NW swell and the NE wind made for a very interesting chop, lots of white caps breaking into the kayak, my NRS waterproof pants were being tested that’s for sure!

When I did eventually get to the estuary I found the tide was still going out… hmm, paddling up the estuary against the tide.  Well it started off ok, got over the tiny bar and out the other side still in the kayak but that was when it all got very hard to paddle, I was paddling hard and only going forward at half a knot (normal paddling speed is around 3 knots) time to get off the kayak and walk pulling the kayak behind me – actually that was just as hard… Here is the bar, may be they should call it a mini bar.

Ah well you can’t catch fish everyday can you… Time to check out what Whananaki is famous for… the longest footbridge in the southern hemisphere.

Time to head home and get ready for the King of the Harbour competition tomorrow!