Fisherman brings home the bacon

Bob Monteith with an 80lb wild sow he and a friend caught while fishing on Lake Taupo. Photo / Supplied

If you wanted to bag a wild pig for the freezer, 200m out in a lake is hardly the first place you'd look.

But a fairly average fishing expedition turned into a successful hunting foray for Kuratau man Bob Monteith and a mate when they caught a wild sow they found swimming in Lake Taupo.

The pair were afloat in Kawakawa Bay in the lake's remote north-west quarter on the first day of a three-day fishing trip when they heard a dog "going to town" in the distance.

They set off to see what the fuss was about and about 200m offshore came across a pig paddling like crazy towards the open water, with a dog in hot pursuit.

They maneuvered their boat between pig and dog, channelled their inner cowboys to lasso the pig, pulled the tired animal on board and promptly finished it off.

The dog headed back to shore empty-pawed. The hunter was never seen, to Bob's relief, who thought they might have landed someone else's dinner.

"I was waiting for a shot across the bows from the hunter."

With a 36.3kg (80lb) porker on board and two days of fishing still ahead, the pair had to figure out what to do with their surprise catch, so they rang Bob's son Lachie, who met them at Kinloch to take possession of the carcass.

Lachie skinned the pig and took it to a local butcher who turned it into roasts, chops, spare ribs and other cuts, which were distributed around family and friends.

Bob said the fishing expedition itself wasn't a huge success, with only 10 trout caught between two boats in three days, but at least he got something for the table, even if it did annoy Lachie a little in the process.

"It's actually my son who's a hunter and he was not very happy that dad got the pig."

Bob said he had seen a pig escaping a dog caught by a fisherman once before, at Lake Tarawera, but now he had his own big-catch fishing story to dine out on.

"A couple of 60-year-olds trying to pull this pig in was quite hard case and it gave us a lot of mirth, and the hunting trophy for the weekend."

- The Turangi Chronicle