Water Writing Competition 2012

      In term 2, the whole school wrote a personal experience about our fishing trip. People had a choice of writing about fishing on a boat or surf-casting on the shore. We had some magnificent writers who got into the finals to win a fishing rod that lights up every time you spin the reel. The winner of the competition was Stella Means, and the other pupils that got in the finals won pencil case and a ruler.

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Smack! “Ow!” I screamed painfully as my baby brother repeatedly slaps me in the face while I was sleeping in the car. “Get him off me, get him off!” As soon as I opened the door, I saw Mheltricia holding my brother. “Did you plan all this?” I questioned her. “No”… she lied. I pulled a face at her. “Fine!” she said, I did plan all this.” Oh yeah? I said, just to make sure. Mheltricia nodded. “Good, hope you like walking,” I said. “What?!” she cried. “You’ll find out later” I replied.

As I walked up the sand dunes of terrific Tangimoana, I saw the wonderful Tasman Sea. The waves were stomping on the shore like an enthusiastic but angry elephant and a sun ray pointed to a wave making a rainbow decoration on the surface. I ran down the sand dune almost tripping every step I took – “Glad that’s all over,” I cried. “Ow,ow,ow, ye ouch!” I hate gravel…. Ten minutes later, we arrived at our fishing spot, cast our first line and hooked our first Kahawai of the day.

Beep beep, the first of our friends arrived, the Tolentino family. “Mum, can I go swimming?” I asked. “Okay, but watch out for the hooks and move out of the way when the others are reeling in mum answered,” giving me advice. SPLASH!!! The waves tackled me like a ferocious All-Black. The waves collided into the sand with a crashing explosion. After a few minutes of swimming, another family came – this time it’s the Caballero’s. Benson changed into his togs and splashed onto the icy ocean with me. “TIME OUT!” dad called out to us – lunch time. Oh man, I’m hungry, I thought to myself. Crunch, crunch then a loud burp. “Excuse me,” I said.

Dad gasped. His rod had drawn his attention. He pulled as hard as Hulk, wondering what this unknown beast could be. Just then I heard a crunch – what was that? Dad was confused. He showed it to the rest of us. “IT’S HALF OF A KAHAWAI!” I screamed. Its guts were hanging all over the place. What was left reminded me of a black-tip reef shark pup dad had caught on Foxton Beach awhile ago. “You forgot to apply some sunscreen,” mum reminded me – so I did.

As our break wore on, even more families visited. Some of our friends already drove away into the weedy sunset as I took my last dip into the water. We ended up with eight kahawai and two herring, A.K.A. yellow eyed mullet as our fantastic fishing trip ended. Dad drove us to the Tolentino’s residence to cook and gobble up our delicious kahawai. Yum!  

By Aaron Gutierrez

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Come on, heave ho, and push the boat. As we push the sparkling yellow, blue and white boat into the dazzling blue water it slipped through our fingers and hit the wharf with an almighty splash! Luckily enough I jumped at the right time and stopped the boat from floating away into the vast ocean.

5 boring and excitement building minutes we got to the fishing spot, cast our lines out. We changed spot but had no luck but… all 5 people have a sharp tug so we all pulled and pulled and finally we got some dazzling and scaly snapper! “Fish and chips tonight” yelled Jas. “Yay!” we all yelled. We kept going until lunch and stopped. But we weren’t going back until 2pm.

After lunch we cast our lines out again and the same thing happened but my rod had bent till the water. “I’ve got a big one” I yelled and then Jas yelled, “It’s a shark.” “Cool” I screamed as I frantically tried to pull up this monster. Jas started up the boat and chased this horrific sun of the dark sandy bottom of the ocean. It took an hour to get it in and it was a 50kg monster. It was the size of 5 desks and I was so surprised that the beast did not break my rod. Unfortunately we killed it because it was going to die anyway.

After an outstanding day of fabulous fishing we started going back to shore. Jas, “Can I please drive the boat – pretty pretty please” I said. "OK" Jas said. So I hopped into the seat and cranked it all the way up and we sped off into the horizon.

By Cameron Hislop