The weather had really set in from the night before, but it was good to see our location in the daylight. Massive multi dollar waterfront homes, nestled amongst picturesque farmlands with the Mercury Island mansions being own by well know identity Michael Fay, and if your pockets are deep enough you can rent for around $20,000 a night! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Islands)

We strapped everything down, put everything away and headed out into the opening of the bay to start our journey through the wind (35knt) and swell (2m) to get back towards Coromandel. It was a long trip but gave Rob and Pete plenty of time to decide what would be the best location for us to find some protection and get to have a fish. With the length of the journey on my mind and the rocky of the boat, I felt the need to grab some more sleep to make up for some average sleeps from nights prior.

After a couple of hours I awoke to the smell of breakfast wafting through the cabin, the engines revs lowering and the swell subsiding as we entered into Karaka Bay. I stepped up to the ladder to the bridge from below deck and saw that there was hardly a breath of wind, light blue waters with a light swell where the boat had anchored up.

The kayaks were lowered into the water with the guys pushing out to the deeper water where talk of Gurnards could possibly be found, and by the time Wes and I were on the water, Brad had already landed one.

Wes, Steve and myself made our way to the washes and quickly learnt how close we could get without fear of getting swept into the rocks. Wes popped his first cast into the white water, hooked up then had a big set roll in. He paddled frantically to get out the back a little and managed to land the fish once he was in safer waters.

It was at this point Steve left us to ourselves as we continued to flick into the wash along an extended part of the coast. We were quiet taken back by how well the Ocean Kayak Prowler 4.3 Ultra’s handled what we were doing with them. Not once did we feel like we were going in and the conditions were completely new to us. On several occasions we had chop breaking over our legs, into our chest and straight over the kayaks which was always followed by some chuckling and laughs from who ever it didn’t happen to.

We pulled plenty of fish from this location, just casting the soft plastics into the white wash, letting it hit the bottom and usually if it wasn’t picked up on the first drop, it would get smashed after 2 quick hops.

We kept going until we saw a gap in landscape with a small rocky beach where we could pull up for a break, stretch the legs and have a little explore. Behind the hill we came across a small fresh water creek that filtered through the rocks and into the ocean.

We got back in the yaks and started fish our way back to the boat picking up some small fish along the way. We saw the boat start its move in our direction so we knew the day was coming to an end. Once on board we connected our yaks to the daisy chain behind the boat, grabbed some photos of the better fish and sat back and relaxed as we set course for a shower, rum and a normal bed at Pete’s house Lazy Daze in Kennedy Bay.