Glad to help.

I give 90% of my fish away. Sometimes - tho not the plan, I end up eating none of my fish. Family had organised special roast, people coming for dinner and I gave all the other fillets way etc.

Why do I fish?

I love spending time on the water, and if you have a line in as well, you never know what might happen. And you see some real cool stuff - like marlin swimming under your boat - or a big sunfish doing same, or the time I got splashed by a humpback I nearly run over, dragging lures. And then, some fishing days are just epic. And I have taken mates out on some epic gamefishing days - never touched a rod myself and had one of the best days.

Thats why I fish. I fish lots solo - just enjoying being on the water and coming up with a plan and accepting the challenge. Equally I enjoy introducing others to the adrenalin and appreciation of what it is - gamefishing, or the kid I took out at Xmas to catch his first kingi, jigging. I never touched a rod - I got as much from that as he did.

Then you meet great guys and spend time with them like Bazza. Awesome.

Alan

The core thing for me is just being near/on/under the water.  

As a spearo I like to jump in and see stuff up close.  It is both a bit of a challenge and exercise as well allowing you to see how fish behave.  I have had some great days where I have speared one (or zero) fish - e.g. when a mate rang me and said "I need to run in my new boat - lets go to Barrier on Monday" so we took the day off work and did a run out  to GBI.  It was a magic day on the water - saw dolphins, got buzzed by a seal and more.  I came home with 1 snapper for a feed.

Another epic day was a trip out to the Mokes.  On the way out we noticed some big splashes and flashes of white - there were manta rays cruising round!.  We quickly geared up and took turns swimming.  I got to see them spiraling round under me and it felt like they were checking me out as much as I was checking them out.  Out at the Mokes we had 3 pods of dolphins cruising round, saw a shark, speared kingfish, snapper and butterfish.  On the way back we spotted the mantas again.  Moss had stayed in his togs so he lumped in with just a mask and snorkel and had another swim with them (ex-Olympic swimmer - he is a machine in the water).  Not long after that we spotted a Brydes whale (kept our distance as you are supposed to).  Days like that are soooo good.

Then there are times like last weekend.  I had committed to doing Coastguard on Sunday so had planned to do stuff round the house on Saturday but ...  

We woke up on Saturday morning and decided it was too nice not to go out so launched the boat and went for a bit of a float round.  I left my spearfishing gear at home and just took rods this time.  Shelly and I didn't catch any keepers but it was still a great few hours out.  

Sunday was a day out with Coastguard.  We did some navigation practical exercises without the use of GPS (ended up about 300m off our destination after manually plotting our start position and a running a course with compass bearings, time and speed calculations) then a bit of close quarter maneuvering (CQM) training - this time the skipper used a 10m line looped round the top of one of the degaussing buoys in the Tiri channel and the person on the helm had to move the boat in a full circle round the buoy without the skipper having to let go of the line (effectively he had to be within 5m of the buoy the whole time).  This was a bit of a challenge.  Later we had a tasking to take assist a yacht with a dead engine back into the marina and into their berth.  It was great to be on the water learning some stuff as well as helping folks out.

All of the above days tick my boxes for why I do stuff.

wow that's cool. Must be tricky keeping up!

Nice. Some common themes emerging here. There is one thing we all share in common so far. We've all been in this for the long run. Awesome stuff guys 

An aerial off a Sherman tank was what my dad used in his younger days. Again, simpler times

When I was born, my parents were sent a telegram that was short and simple: "Congratulations, another fisherman". How true that turned out to be.

I agree with MB and other posters - I think it's in your blood.

My grandparents on my father's side were working class and did it tough in Depression era NZ, but had a boat and fished for food and I guess the enjoyment of it in the Manukau - rowing a dinghy huge distances apparently. My dad was born and grew up in Onehunga and went on their outings from the time he was a toddler. He has fished all his life, had small boats throughout adulthood and still wants to get out in his late 80s. He is a meat hunter at heart, still a child of the late Depression.

I spent hours fishing off wharves and rocks as a kid, and going out in the boat with dad to target snapper. We usually took a boat with us on summer holidays at Oamaru Bay, Port Jackson and Coopers Beach. My mum said that any time we went out for a family dinner my meal choice was not negotiable - fish and chips.

I became totally fascinated with fly fishing as a teenager, saved up for some gear using holiday earnings, and taught myself casting and fly tying out of books. 

When in my OE, I grabbed the chance to fish if I could borrow a line, rod, whatever. Kob off the coast of Namibia; piranha in the Amazon.

I finally got my own small runabout four years ago and still find it hard to sleep the night before a trip. The thrill of hooking a big fish always gives me a surge of adrenaline. My name is The Tamure Kid, and I'm an addict!

As others have touched on, I also love the outdoors, the beach, the coast. My wife is the same, and we bought a house with a distant sea view. Out on the water, I love and appreciate the bird and other wildlife, and the natural beauty - whether it be storm clouds, dawn light, sunsets, whatever.

My theory is that some people carry a hunter gather gene more strongly than others, and I'm one of them, as are you Smudge, and others on this thread. When I travelled to the wilderness parts of Africa I was noticeably better at game spotting than others, picking out shapes of animals a long way away after a quick glimpse through a gap between bushes, or out of the corner of my eye.

i'm not saying that to boast, but as a pointer to something I think is genetic.

So today I fish for food and the thrill, always scheming about how to catch big snapper on softbaits, while also bringing home a feed. I love going flounder spearing a couple of times a year, totally focused on the hunt and the solitude of the estuary at night. Squid, yip tried that too.

I still do the odd fly fishing trip, combined with family holidays. Love it. 

I have spent more than I care to think about on tackle and rods/reels, including a lot which was just part of a passing fad and will likely never get used. George Best's quote about spending a fortune on booze and women etc comes to mind - the bit about the rest he wasted. Just the ritual of placing a new lure into my fishing tackle cupboard, dreaming about one day catching a kingie on it, for example, was probably worth the money - especially at a time when my fishing was limited for some reason. I was fulfilling my passion in another way.

I also love taking my boys out in the boat. The older one has it in his blood too. He carried around sticks at kindy, pretending they were fishing rods. He too has seemingly endless patience when out fishing. 

I just want to be fit and able to enjoy going out on missions with my boys as they become adults, like my father before me, and his father before him - and for our waters to still have fish to catch.

Ti Point Wharf was was where I started seriously, used to be lot going on in those days there in the 70s.