The Family Sting Ray

The tides were good, the sun was shiny and off we went via the fish shop to get some bait to spend the afternoon messing about in boats ('Sedan Delivery' our 1985 Tracker 7.7m Yacht to be exact). Recently repainted lovely bright yellow with a black bum. (Mr Mad said we would get attacked by whales if we had a black bum!!!) Theres one in every boat yard, Mr Mad that is, not a whale. The fishing was lousy in the spot we chose out by Little Manly Beach up the Whangaparoa Peninsular, although we saw loads of fish on our lovely new Navman fish finder/Depth/Speed/Temp thing on the way there and back, they all buggered off when we stopped to fish. Phil caught a couple of little (too little snapper) but then got seasick as it was swelly, so back up the river on a rising tide we went and tried our luck on the mooring. Lots of people catch decent fish up the river.
We had got through most of the bonito bait when something ran away with my line. I promptly gave the rod (Ryans) to Phil so he could do the 'old man and the sea' bit and reel in the giant huge snapper that I had caught. It took forever, the fish ran away with the line, came back, sat on the bottom for a bit, swam up and down the river by which time we had decided it was probably a ray but we weren't prepared for the SIZE of it!!!! it was at least as big as the dinghy from its pug nose to its long whippy tail, anyway thats enough writing lets have some pictures, the first one is Phil being Heroic and the other one is the Fish. We had to cut it loose in the end - Phil got it close up to the boat and I reached over and cut the line just by the hook.
almost as good as the 'Cuttlefish incident' but bigger and less squirmy.

My what a long tail you've got!
We called it the family Stingray 'cos I hooked it, Phil played it and it was Ryans rod.