Geoff Thomas: Piece of paradise

Tonnes of blue cod and groper, and several charter boats, cater for visiting anglers. Photo / Geoff Thomas

Kai means food and koura is the name for crayfish, so it is pretty clear where Kaikoura got its name. And the crayfishing is as good as ever.

The town nestled in the shadow of the giant mountains at the top of the Southern Alps is a sportsman's paradise.

"My mate shot a deer out of his lounge yesterday," said Blackie, the affable skipper of the charter vessel, Takapu.

"It came out of the bush on to his lawn, which backs on to the foothills." There are chamois in the mountains, whitebait and trout in the rivers and wild pigs in the bush, along with a lot of deer.

But it is the creatures which dwell in the canyons where the seabed drops away, continuing the contour of the mountains which buttress the coast, which the place is best known for.

The whales.

Young, solitary male sperm whales live there for several years, gaining weight and maturing until at the age of 20 they can challenge a herd bull and join a group, or pod.

The bathymetric chart shows the seafloor plunging straight down to 3000m just off Goose Bay, a few kilometres south of the township. Every day tourists head out on one of the modern, fast catamarans to look for dolphins and whales. A spotter plane or helicopter goes first, to locate the mammals. The whales spend 10 minutes on the surface, charging their blood with rich oxygen which will sustain them as they dive to depths of 3000m in search of giant squid and fish such as hapuka. A whale can spend up to two hours under water, and when diving to extreme depths their flexible ribcage allows the lungs to collapse and the heart rate decreases to preserve oxygen. But typical dives are to about 400m and 30-45min in duration. And they are prodigious feeders - consuming 3 per cent of their body weight of 50,000kg each day - or 1500kg of fish.

The rich marine life, nourished by nutrients forced up from the depths by ocean currents, not only supports the dolphin and whale-watching industry based in Kaikoura but also the fishing.

Commercial fishing harvests tonnes of blue cod and groper (local name for hapuka) and several charter boats cater for visiting anglers.

"Crayfish are better now than they have been for years, because most of the commercial boats have gone," says Blackie as he empties a cray pot into a fish bin. The commercial quota has been cut to preserve the fishery, which is now based mainly on tourism.

The two-man crew on Takapu lift three pots, selecting 12 crays which they are allowed to keep as recreational fishermen. These will go home with the charter party, as well as a bin full of blue cod fillets.

Where else can you go out on a fishing charter and take home crayfish?

These guys run a smooth operation. Our party of keen anglers came from Ashburton, and they had won the day out fishing through a promotion run by Rheem - and they were keen. Some had never been fishing here before and the first baits dropped on a secret spot Blackie had marked on his chart-plotter produced blue cod and fat-bellied red cod.

"The groper are just starting to turn up. They move in from the deep water in November and stay until about May," said Blackie. There is no groper in this spot today, but when you can catch them in 85m of water you are doing well.

"We could go out to 300m, but who wants to wind them up from that depth?" he said.

True. The heavy rods, with large Penn Senator reels spooled with braid line, and outfitted with a solid trace, three long-shanked hooks on droppers and a weight which would damage a toe if it was dropped, are a handful when you are sending down fresh baits every few minutes.

But the cod kept coming up - red cod which are filleted and cut into chunks for bait and blue cod which are filleted on the spot, the glistening white strips popped into ice-filled buckets.

Then a long, evil-looking conger eel surfaces, and is helped up for a photo.

"Anybody got a smoker?" asked Blackie.

No takers, so it went back over the side.

Then a sharp-toothed barracouta was dropped on to the deck - good bait for cod and groper. More eels punctuated the endless stream of blue cod which filled the ice buckets.

The action never slowed all day but the groper were still out in the depths, and another month should see that fishing pick up.

But when the tired group loaded their mini-van for the 3 hour drive back to Ashburton, their chilly bins were packed with plastic bags of fresh fillets, plus those crayfish.

"How do you kill the crayfish?" asked Karen Clements.

"Put it in the freezer or drown it in a bucket of fresh water. Then boil it for about eight minutes. Like all seafood, don't overcook it."