Again, another early start but this should be my last one for a while so it's all good.
It was a relatively short drive to Kaikoura and the hostel we were staying at seemed really nice and cosy: we quickly had time to make dinner which involved me burning myself with hot water making noodles... Culinary master, me! Then we dropped a few people at a dolphin encounter place, went to visit a seal colony and then myself, Lucy, Stuart and Val got taken to this old guys house who would be taking us fishing.
His house was really nice and he insisted we all make ourselves at home and make a cup of tea which was really nice of him, then he explained that two other people would be taking us fishing but we would go back to his to cook them up and eat. A van pulled up to come and collect us and it stank of fish, and the guys looked like such stereotypical fisherman; I was super excited by this and well aware of how bad I was going to smell after this haha.
They drove us down to the beach and then hopped out to get us all into the boat...
It was at this point I noticed that the, 'captain' I suppose, had one leg...
Now I'm not sure what kind of fishing I had signed up for exactly but this guy has one leg, all his fingers are like half fingers and the boat were all going fishing in is absolutely tiny... So of course in true Spielberg fashion I'm thinking "we're going to need a bigger boat"
Turns out he lost his leg to a shark attack when he was 17 (apparently) and the fake leg he was using was so battered I found it hard not to stare...
Anyway, fishing. So we drive out in this little boat which had surprising power for such a small thing and go collecting crayfish pots. This involves the skipper guy leaning over the boat with a big hook and hooking a buoy which is then wound up on a big wrench and this huge cage popped out with 4 crayfish in it; they then take out the fish, get some fish skins and put them in a compartment to lure in the next lot of crayfish and then drop the cage back to the base of the sea.
The captain then explained to us the rules that they have on crayfish, which firstly involved telling the difference between a male and a female which can be done by looking at their claws and then they have to measure a certain size across for them to take them back; I think this was to do with people buying it for one and also that they have to protect their reproduction aswell. Women can also have what looks like a load of berries on the bottom of her stomach and this means she's pregnant or in the reproduction stages so these too get thrown back into the water along with the small ones. After this we pulled up about 4 more crayfish cages and ended up with about 6 decent size ones and then went further into the ocean for some deep sea perch fishing.

We were each given a rod with bits of perch as bait, which I just found really weird; using what we were trying to catch as bait ... Anyway, we had to drop our line until it hit the base of the sea floor and it felt like it went on for ages, it was actually about 80 metres I think. Then we just waited until the line twitched, at this point we had to pull Te rod to one side which would pull the hook into the fish's mouth and then we had to stop reeling in the line.
People who had already done this told me how their arms hurt the next day and within a few minute of reeling in this line, it soon became very apparent why their arms hurt!!! I pulled in my first perch and Jesus are they ugly fish (imagine nemo all washed out high on cannabis) then quickly after I caught another two on one line! Lucy then started catching some and we ended up with a total of 11 fish between us; the Irish and Scottish only caught about 4 between them... Go Team England!!!
As we were all fishing; the captain and skipper were killing the perch and filleting them so we wouldn't have to do it when we got back... The captain had a cigarette hanging out his mouth as he was doing it and there was blood and guts everywhere: food hygiene out at sea is obviously a no-go! Soon after this Stuart started to go very green an I was pretty sure he was going to feed the fishes but he somehow kept it in!

8 extremely achy arms and 15 perch later we headed back to land! For a few minutes I literally could have thrown my rod in the sea as my arms felt like they were going to give up and just flop out my shoulders!

We got back to the beach and went back to the guys house while they took out another group of tourists.
Back at the house we were given bottles of wine, bags of crisp and shown how to kill the crayfish in the most humane way; which is to put them in fresh water where the oxygen levels aren't high enough for them to survive. We drank more wine, and a bit more and suddenly all started to feel pretty drunk as we'd not eaten since dinner.
Then the captain and skipper came back and quite a few of all their friends, they showed us how to cut the crayfish and how to suck the leg meat out the shell which sounds gross but really was the best bit. We also met the captains dog which was this cutest little black dog called "captain jack sparrow, the land based pirate" this was the most hilarious thing any of us had heard in our drunken state.
More wine was drank and lots of crayfish was eaten before we decided to go back to the hostel to meet the rest of the group; we bought some chips, cooked the perch and had ourselves a little feast while we all chatted drunken crap I'm sure.
The plan was then to go chill out for a bit and meet at 9 to go watch the football game down at the pub... What actually happened was that myself and Lucy decided to have a nap about 10 past 8 and woke up at nearly 11, whoops!!
We thought about going to catch the rest of the game and then quickly decided bed was a better idea; must have been a good afternoon to pass out at that time!