A black shadow emerges from the predawn water. It glides past us and emits a dismissive snort through its spout before peeling off to the starboard. It’s our first encounter with a humpback whale on our trip.
Prior to this in the predawn darkness we meet our charter and, only in Niue, The wharf is built high above the water line and boats have to be lowered down on a hoist. It is unique jumping onto a boat in mid air and then lowered down into the water below.
Our captain takes Anthony and myself 40 minutes out from the wharf and sets up the fishing lines. We are trawling for tuna initially. The daylight is just winning the competition with the night. The sky is a pretty cerise blue with crimson overtones and suddenly the rod to my right emits a zinging sound that something is on. Our captain,Ian, hands me the rod and it is an enjoyable few minutes contest dragging in a 4 kg Yellowfin tuna. Admittedly it was not so enjoyable for the fish! Half an hour later it is Anthony who pulls in a pretty blue skipjack tuna.
A bit later another hit had me briefly battling unsuccessfully with what was probably a shark. The fish was amazingly powerful and I was losing ground. Ian took over and brought him close to the boat before the presumed shark bit through the line.
I am a very intermittent fisherman but this takes second place to an amazing fishing trip off Noosa in 1996 where my rod seemed blessed and I pulled in a number of big fish including a 15kg dhufish.
Unfortunately the rest of the trip consisted of hours of tedium without a single nibble.The trip was bookended though back near the wharf when a massive humpback launched itself out of the sea perpendicularly with only its tail below the water crashing back into the sea and then repeating the pirouette. My camera was not to hand but Anthony captured on grainy video the end of the performance. For me this amazing close encounter is forever etched in my mind.
