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Diamond tr ev great fighte allys are rs than that, but hey, we were there, and straight away we got into some nice fish. Lots of bommies, good fish sign too, trolling caught us snapper on our Halcos as well as assorted cod, and the best fish of the day, a thumper of a diamond trevally, and on baits fed in to the bommies, a string of nice sweetlip, snapper and other ooglies. Over this period of two or three hours, I had noticed the wind swinging just a tad more easterly, and to my mind, not noticeably easing to that prophesised 10kn, just the reverse in fact. I made mention of this, extensivey, until finally around 2pm Pete finally relented and declared: "All right then, we'll bloody go back now then for Pete's sake!" He didn't actually say "Pete's sake" but another, less printable four letter word. So, rounding the point from the protected northerly tip of the island, we suddenly found just how wrong Aussie forecasters can be. The bastards. Facing a straight run back to Denham of about 40nm to the SSE, we found ourselves faced with a 2kn following tide flow, into a 20kn southerly "breeze" blowing straight up the huge expanse of Shark Bay. Wind against tide. Short sharp chop about 1.5-2m high, and about as far apart. In an open centre console boat. 40 fricken nautical miles. Oh, just peachy. Damn. Not being even slightly sheltered by the small windscreen Pete had, fully exposed to the constant blasting of wind-driven spray, I could neither open my eyes nor easily breathe for the first hour or so as we ploughed our way slowly into this venomous sea. God, it was awful. Luckily, by about 4pm the tide slackened and the seas eased enough for us to at least breathe without swallowing salt water, and come 5pm, the wind did ease to around 15kn again and so we were able to finally get back to the jetty at around 6pm. Damn man, that near broke me... never more gunga-din, if that was fishing in a centre console, you could stick that up yer jumper! By universal agreement, a lay-day was called for the following day, we were all completely stuffed. From then on, the last few days we definitely worked the weather, not the fish, and had a far more comfortable time of it all, it was a fun trip. But man, 40nm into a 20kn wind in a 7m CC, bugger that! So the fishing was OK, not exactly electric, but at least (when not spray drenched that is) warm in the middle of our winter here in New Zealand, but hardly exceptional. However, what really was most noteworthy to me was the experience of working the fisheries laws in Western Australia. Boy, talk about bureaucratic over-regulation. I will never ever moan about any of our rules here (not that I do, I have always thought our bag limits to be quite generous), because it is far, far worse in WA. We were in Shark Bay, a huge area hardly heavily fished, but there was in place a daily bag limit of five legal fish per angler. Just five. That ain't much brother. However, you can work it, keeping only decent, large fish, it is liveable I guess. However, what I objected to was another regulation that I saw led to chronic waste of fish, and that is the law that no person may have more than 20kgs of fish fillets or parts of fish in their possession at any time. Not just in your boat, but in your freezer at home, or indeed in your neighbour's freezer if that neighbour is not a licensed fisherman. That includes any fish you may catch and keep for bait, so no keeping of any skippies for bait mate, or you'll be done. "Ah, but 20kgs is a lot of fish!" I hear you say. Well petal, not really. You go out fishing for hapuku or kingies some time and land a couple of good ones. You will pretty much have your 20kgs of fillets off just two decent 15kg fish. And then, if you have a few snapper fillets in the fridge at home? Here is your fine sir, have a nice day. Hell, what happens if you land a 35kg puka, as soon as you fillet that sucker, you instantly will have broken the law! Even www.skipper.co.nz better, imagine keeping a marlin! Instant fine as soon as you fillet it, and yes, that is absurd! However, this 20kg limit does mean that no-one in WA will keep anything other than prime, boneless fillets. Here at home, I get decent sized fish, I will smoke the frames for the meat they contain (Aussies don't smoke fish, but slapping frames on the barbie is just as good), I will take the thick, juicy throats and wings for smoking or frying up, and on larger groper type fish, I will always take the cheeks out, for the fist sized slabs of sweet meat. I will keep snapper heaps and puka heads for my mates who like boil-ups (yeuch, I can't stand that reek!), not a lot of the fish ever gets wasted. Not so in WA. With your limit of 20kg, no-one will use up their allowance keeping frames, heads or wings. So it all winds up in a bin. The waste I saw over there damn near made me weep, although that may have been the salt water spray in my eyes. If that was the intent of the regulations, well, someone in their recreational fishing regulation department needs a damn good kick in the bum. It was stupid and appalling. But as my mates said, with a shrug of their shoulders, "we know, but them's the rules!" There are other absurdities as well that I shall not go into, mainly because it just winds me up too much, but suffice to say, guys, we just do not know how lucky we are here in New Zealand to have the freedom to harvest and freely use our fish as we do. That brings me at the last to my final day in Perth. Pete and I had just put his boat to bed in his storage unit, when Pete stopped in to show me a new Super-cheap fresh fish shop. This shop was just recently opened, and was about 10 percent cheaper than most other fresh fish shops in Perth. Pete wanted to show me what fish cost in WA and why they were so very keen to get their maximum allowable limit of 20kgs if they can. Do you look at snapper fillets at the supermarket here and think "no effin' way am I going to pay $32 a kilo for snapper!"? Well, I sure do. Or rather, I did, because in this "cheap" fish shop, fresh snapper fillets were $59.95 per kilo. Aussie dollars. And in Perth, snapper (pink snapper to them but our fish is the same as theirs) is not that highly a rated fish. The dhufish (kind of like hapuku) is more favoured. It was rolling out the door at $69.95 a kilo, but the most prized, red emperor, was a tasty $79.95 a kilo. Hapuku was also $69.95, as was what we call bluenose. Can you believe those prices? I still can't get my head around it, but that is why I guess the fish and chips in the shops is like $20 a serve... I thought it was just high priced "cafe" style food. But no, even your cheap corner chippy has to charge that sort of dosh for shark'n'taties. Scary stuff! So, for the second issue in a row folks, I have to say... We don't know how lucky we are! July/August 2013 Professional Skipper 51