Nah but we did catch well over 50 in an hour. There was no challenge to them, but they were absolutely delicious. We had five hooks baited and only once did we reel in only one, usually it was at least two or three occassionally four. We were fishing close to half a mile down so the real challenge was literally reeling them in. We did catch so many that the guide chummed up a "small" great white as the carcasses after filleting could only be eaten so quickly by the three species of albatross surrounding the boat. The thing is they were incidental catch because we were trying to catch the much bigger blue cods but we couldn't get the bait past the enormous schools of sea perch. So we only caught three decent sized red cod and two blue cod plus five "groupers" and maybe a dozen "snappers" because we literally could not stop catching the sea perch.
That fishing trip was out of Kaikoura which is an amazing place. There's a deep multiple mile deep canyon and quite deep canyon that runs right into the shore. And right behind shore are some "small" mountains higher than most of those east of the Mississippi. So it basically goes mile plus high mountains to small flat rocky beach and maybe a couple football fields of rocky coast that's only a dozen or so feet deep then it immediately starts falling off to two miles down. So we were only a couple of football fields away from shore yet were deep sea fishing about a half mile down on the slope into the canyon. It's the only place that you can easily as a tourist see Sperm Whales as they are usually hundreds of miles off shore but in Kaikoura that super rich deep sea trench filled with tons and tons of seafood including colossal and giant squid is right near shore. So on that fishing trip we saw two Sperm Whales, plenty of NZ fur seals, a leopard seal which was quite far north, dusky Dolphins, three species of albatross including the Wandering or biggest flying bird, petrels and a Great White. On our way out to fishing we stopped in the shallows and dropped lobster traps and on the way back in had eight rock lobsters waiting or us two more than we could legally carry.
So when we got back to the bed and breakfast I had easily a hundred pounds of filets and steaks plus four of the lobsters so in exchange for the B&B owner cooking up the rock lobsters plus two sea perch filets, a tai snapper filet and a steak of blue cod we gave her the rest so she could sell it in her restaurant. We teamed all of that seafood with the best Sauvignon blanc from Marlborough which we'd picked up at the vineyard the day before. Hands down the best lunch I've ever had.
After lunch we did a whale watching tour which was somewhat anticlimactic as we'd already seen Sperm Whales (we did see three more on the tour) BUT...we got to see and photograph the first confirmed sightings of beaked whales (basically large deep diving giant snakelike Dolphins). After our photos a team from Australia came and a few weeks later "officially confirmed" their existence and "discovered them" as they'd only been found in bones washing ashore.
So yeah...that day is my favorite day at sea anywhere.
