Cray country lives up to its reputation

Anton Evans takes only the large buck crayfish. Photo / Sheryl Campbell

A diving trip off Kaikoura yields some good-sized specimens.

Crayfish and food. That is what springs to mind when the word Kaikoura is mentioned and the translation kicks in. So when Anton Evans offers to take us out in his 9m charter boat, the Rodfather, to pick up crays we don't hesitate.

"We'll pick up some crays for you to take home, and then I'll bait the pots," says Evans as he backs the boat down the slipway at Kaikoura. Giant cray boats are parked alongside charter boats on huge trailers. Double-wheeled tractors haul them in and out of the sea, and just across the harbour five large cats sit alongside the jetties, waiting to carry tourists out to the deep canyons where the sperm whales roam.

It is 2km deep just off the coast and the whales dive down to a 1km, staying down for 90 minutes as they hunt fish like groper and squid. The sperm whale grows to 20m and consumes up to a tonne of food every day.

Anton dropped the anchor in only 5m of water and with his diving mate from Christchurch, Grant Silvester, planned to swim against the current and the wind as they hunted crays on a sloping shelf where the reef dropped away.

The wind was blowing offshore, howling and whipping up whitecaps.

"If we come up and get blown past the boat we could be in serious trouble. If you see us raise one hand, throw all the anchor rope over the side on a float and come and get us. We can go back for the anchor later. We can't swim against this wind," said Evans.

"I was out in conditions like this one day," added Silvester, "and there were two wives on the boat while we dived. We came up a hundred metres away and they pulled up the anchor before starting the motor. Well, the motor just gave a couple of sick noises and died. Flat battery. The wind was blowing the boat away and they couldn't do anything, so I dropped my dive bottle, regulator, bag - everything - and it took me half an hour to swim to the boat which was drifting out to sea."

After 30 minutes Evans surfaced a good 100m away and raised one arm. We emptied the drum full of anchor rope over the side with a float attached, and motored over to pick him up.

"How was it?" we asked after we had also recovered Grant.

"I went straight down the anchor rope and there was a heap of big bucks just sitting there!" said Evans. "We only take males, and leave the females to breed," he added.

The divers had their quota of six crays each, and we had dinner for a bunch of friends back in Auckand while watching the All Blacks perform in Brisbane.

Fresh waterThis is a good time of year to target big brown trout in the Waikato hydro lakes. Fish and Game liberate 4000 baby rainbow trout into Lake Arapuni this month, and 1500 into Lake Karapiro. Lures like Rapala plugs in rainbow colours can work well when cast on spin tackle or trolled on the lakes.