Goin' Trawlin'

The Journey Man

I'm getting pretty pushy in my old age! Not only had Jack been kind enough to feed me whitebait, but I also convinced him to let me tag along with him when he went fishing on the Tasman Sea.

He kept warning me about getting seasick, but I can honestly say that I've never been seasick, and I've been on plenty of boats, yachts and ships over the years. The closest I got was a bit of queasiness on a cruise ship in 1997. But I overcame it.

Anyway...the type of fishing he does is called trawling. Trawling is basically putting out a large net several meters long and with the help of chains, having the net drag along the bottom of the ocean, pulling in bottom-feeding fish. After a few hours, the net is pulled in and you have a plethora of fish to sort through.

I'm not going to write you a novel, I'll let the videos and pictures do the talking. Enjoy the fishing!

A gorgeous sunny day

Below: A Tour of the The Journey Man

Below: A life-saver!

Below: Throwing out the line

Birds zoning in on the catch



Below: The first catch

When the guys pulled in the net, they found that they had caught some crayfish too! What luck! We only kept a few and threw the rest back in the ocean. The guys believed they were on the march because it's not crayfish season and yet there were a lot of them and they were all adults.

Below: Post-embarrassment video!

Below: The variety of flatfish

Red Cod in the foreground and gurnard in the background


A combination of different flatfish including brill, sole and turbot

Below: The Chiller

Evening pinks on the mountains

Floral Sunset on the Tasman Sea


Below: Electric Skate on the second run

Below: Who knew there was such a thing as sea lice?

We got back to Westport at 10:00p.m., having gone out at 11:00a.m. On the way back, Jack filleted a gurnard for me to cook up and also gave me one of the crayfish he picked up.

I was starving by the time I got back to the backpackers. Can you imagine how hungry? I had only had a piece of bread with butter in the morning and three cups of tea, two of which I had on the boat and subsequently threw up. So, now I can honestly say that I have been seasick and it wasn't so fun! Thankfully I only threw up tea, but I didn't want to push my luck and ingest anything while on the boat.

So I didn't eat anything until about 11p.m. that night and I had stir-fried vegetables with fresh gurnard and crayfish! Delicious! What a nice way to end the day! Thank you to Jack who was patient and kind enough to show me the world of commercial fishing. It was really cool!