4WDing and Fishing

We weren't sure what to do this weekend, whether to go hunting or fishing or tramping... or nothing-ing. Then we received a phone call late Friday evening from Greg's friend Rex, who lives about 100m up the road (Greg often goes rabbit shooting with Rex). Rex is 73 and is a mostly retired market gardener who grew up in Invercargill and now lives his life the way Greg would like to.... fishing and hunting and nothing-ing.

Rex was phoning to invite us out 4WDing with the Shotover 4WD club, of which Rex is a member. They go out on "club runs" every few weeks where they head into a different 4WD area near to here, and this week they were heading into the upper Mataura. We weren't sure if we'd know anyone, but we turned up at the meeting point and knew over half the people there, including Neil and Glenys from across the road.

We had a brilliant day, and were passengers in a number of different trucks throughout the day - everyone wanted us to jump in with them so that they could show off their trucks. We're trying hard to not get hooked as it seems to be an expensive hobby... but too late. We're already devising plans to either do up the Bighorn (snorkel, suspension, tow hooks, winch and mud tyres) or sell it and buy something more suitable.

It was more tiring than we thought it would be - we left home at 9:30am and bumped and jiggled our way through the next 10 hours, not getting home again until nearly 8pm, but it was soooo much fun.

The trucks lined up at the top of one of the two ridges we went up:

Stopping for a rest:

The view from the top of the ridge. In the foreground you can see the track we came up, and yes, we started off right down the bottom of the valley!

Cleaning the truck after one of the mud holes... it's much more fun to use fords than hoses.

This morning we awoke to find the lake mirror-flat and decided to not waste it, so we headed out fishing for a few hours. We did pretty well, coming up with 8 fish in under 2 hours. And no, we won't be telling anyone where we went!

Here's a photo of Greg's knarly old brown trout, which we figured to be about 6 pound. Check out the hump on it's head! Just like old snapper, they get bigger and uglier as they get older.