This is my book on Mangroves. NIWA said they liked it too and sent it to the scientists to have a look at. It was really good fun writing these books.
My book got published on the NIWA site.
My friend sent me a photo of a Mantis Shrimp he had caught 5 years ago.
I was made a Junior fishery officer.
I got interviewed for a TV program about fishing. Very exciting.
This was caught in the harbour. It is a mantis shrimp and they are really vicious. They can break glass and your fingers, so if you catch one, be careful !! This one went to the museum.
This is my book. It has lots of cool photos.
This is me chasing hundreds of oysters catchers.
We were on the wharf and the man on the wharf caught a baby shark with a octopus inside its mouth. The shark had eaten the bait of his line and then eaten an octopus after.
This stingray was caught on the end of wharf and beached so the man could get his hook out of the stingray and then he put it back in the water and it floated off to the deep, deep sea.
I think this shag is sick because it was letting people pat it. It stayed for four hours.
Starting to catch some sharks now off the wharf
Our friend caught a Kahawai and this Mantis Shrimp was inside it...
This was caught by my friend Steve, it is a seven gilled shark.
What a cool mouth and you can see the seven gills.
We found this fish on the beach, we hadn't seen one like this before. It is a stargazer fish.
September 2015
A friend of ours gave us this Mako Shark jaw. It is very cool
Today we went to the beach. We were going for a walk. We noticed a lot of rubbish so we went to the cafe to get a bag to put it in.
First we found a piece of fishing line and we followed it for about 30 meters around and around the beach, and under the sand and around the rocks. The fishing line was wrapped around these branches. The line still had a hook and sinkers on it too.
Then we got some more bags and picked up more rubbish.
We also saw some cool sea life.
Yesterday we went to the beach and on the stairs was a seal.
He had big brown eyes. Dad tried to call him, the seal hissed at us and he flapped his flippers at us, so we left him alone
We bought some really old fishing rods at a charity auction today. Someone thought they were made in the 1930's and they are made of cane.
We went exploring today and found these shells of mantis shrimps, so I have them in my room.
A few weeks ago, mum and I went and did a beach tidy up. It was really sad about how much rubbish was on the beach. We took about 10kgs of rubbish to the rubbish bins. Most of it was plastic. It is sad the the sea life have to live with our rubbish floating around in the water.
Yesterday we were at the beach and I saw a fish hook and line hanging out of a seagulls mouth. It made me feel sad.
The seagull had a hook in its mouth too and the second hook was hanging down from its mouth. The seagull was flicking around trying to get it out of his mouth.
When we walked down the wharf it was like he was trying to tell us to help him.
Also at low tide last week, we saw a big log that had drifted in and lodged by where the boats launch. Hopefully no one runs it over.
We cleaned our tackle boxes out and we hope to go fishing this week.
Guess what...
Today we went exploring and look what we found.
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One day we went fishing. We took Grand dads rod. We always use squid. We put some squid on the hook.
We didn't really take much notice of that rod because we had other rods out too.
A hammerhead shark jumped onto Grand dads rod. It made the rod nearly bend in two. The rod was creaking. We have only ever caught one hammerhead shark. We haven't seen anyone else catch any.
There must be more out there.
Eels
Mum and I went fishing and it was just about night time. We had my rod, mums rod and Grand dads rod fishing.
All of a sudden Grand dads rod was flicking like crazy!! We grabbed the rod and reeled it in. It has a strange snake like thing on the rod and it swirled up the line.
Some fishermen on the wharf got the hook out for us. We caught two of them and they were both over a meter long. We threw them back because the fisherman said they got them all the time. And they can be a bit dangerous and bite you.
Then we found out they were rare in the Kaipara Harbour and normally are in 100 meters of water. We asked the lady at the museum and she said if you catch another one, can you send it to us.
Last night we were fishing and the guy on the wharf caught a different one, so we asked if we are allowed to take it, because he was going to throw it back. So we brought it home in a bucket and it tried to climb out the bucket. It was alive for four hours after we caught it and it didn't even have any water.
We laid it out on plastic, and I made it lie straight, and then we wrapped it carefully in plastic and newspaper and put it in the freezer until we take it to the museum.
Sharks, sharks and more sharks
This day we were fishing with three rods. I asked mum three times to put out my hand line. Finally mum put the hand line out. Some boys were jumping off the wharf bombing and swimming. Five minutes after they left, I caught a Bronze Whaler just under a meter long.
We had to ask a man on the wharf to pull it up for us. The funny thing was, we caught this shark on a two dollar shop hand reel. I just asked mum to change the hook to a bigger one.
I just let the line go straight down by the wharf.
This shark must have been swimming around under the wharf.
The boys swimming had only just left.
This is my biggest catch so far...a bronze whaler.
As you can see in the photo, we have a pretty cool fishing spot.
Sometimes we have the wharf to ourselves and sometimes it gets really busy.
We catch most of our fish on an incoming tide about 2 hours before high tide.
Sometimes people give me a hand on the wharf, with special ways of baiting hooks,
sometimes they show me their special tricks.
Sometimes we catch heaps and sometimes we don't catch anything !!
Hi
We fish from the wharf. I started fishing because it looked fun and I got a bait catcher for my birthday. Grand dad who died a long time ago put his fishing rod in our garage for me when I was big enough. We got it down and set it up and went fishing.
The first thing we caught was a South East Asian Mantis Shrimp, grand dads rod sure was lucky. It was unusual and it went to the museum and I was in the newspaper about it.
Then I got a new little yellow rod and I caught a mullet on it. It was good fun. The yellow rod is good for catching little fish and grand dads rod is good for catching big fish. Grand dads rod is an old game fishing rod.
I have got lots of fishing stories now so will write some more soon, I will put some photos on soon too.
