4.05am – Doris and I detoured through the sleepy Auckland suburbs – stuffed by SH1 road works. Yours truly secured the much coveted “Muppet of the Day” award for forgetting his new dive knife – purchased the day before. Paddles in water at 8am, managed to knock out a JD on the first dive and grab it with the hands after it fell off the spear. 10 minutes later a wait on the sand amongst baitfish revealed a nice eater kingy, which circled in once too many times. To secure Muppet Status, yours truly let go of said reel gun while dealing with the kingy without a knife (refer to Muppet incident one). Fifteen minutes later of frantic prayer and searching revealed the gun floating 2m below the surface, spear in the weed 10m below. Doris just laughed Our next stop, a ridged pinnacle about half a click off shore, that just broke the surface from 19m. While the baitfish were obliging the kingfish were not. After a lecture from a Waikato District Council worker about getting a $200 ticket each not having dive flags displayed, I wished him “a good morning”. We then plodded on glassy waters to Motukorenga Island. Splitting up, the snooping ground was superb, but for the lack of snapper. A cray cave later we met up again, with Doris having secured a nice kahawai for the smoker We then enjoyed a rather pleasant lunch drifting back in the current to Stingray Bay. A few hours were required to maintain my boary culling accredition, spooking an absolute ripper of a sow – which I’m sure I’d given the hurry up the previous trip here. Eventually persistence won, after harassing a few, managed to slot a nice eater, along with some other fish for the table. Noticing parrotfish eating entrails drifting down the weedline, it wasn’t a surprise to see Doris (a) burleying a kahawai; (b) 10 minutes later jumping rapidly back on his kayak; (c) mentioning 2m bronzy had snuck in on him. To which he noted “nothing exciting came in on my burley” All in all, an awesome day – with good weather, great diving and time on the water with a mate - Snoop