Scalloping in Marlborough Sounds.

Scalloping with my Brother, Bob, and Sister-in-law Jan and Erle.


Bob is very comfortable Skippering his boat, Jan is all ready for the picnic.

A few weeks ago when the season had not long opened my Brother Bob rang and asked us out for the day in his boat to do a bit of scallop dredging and some rod fishing, plus a picnic on the shore.
Wow we could hardly wait for them to arrive, it was such a lovely day all over blue sky, sunshiny and calm seas, there was no wind either, making it a wonderful smooth ride.



We had a lovely cruise down the sounds to the outer sounds near Ship's Cove. Bob rigged up the dredge and we made a couple of sweeps but the dredge kept lifting and letting all the scallops go, so he dragged it in and set about making adjustments to realign it with the oceans bottom, he is a mechanic and good at these kind of things. We dropped it again and made a quick sweep, lifted the dredge to test whether it was working and found a heap of wonderful big scallops, so it was back to dragging the dredge back an forth across the bay till we had about 100 scallops, not the full quota allowed but plenty enough for us four.
We did an hour or so of rod fishing but it wasn't our day for fish we got masses of bites but no fish big enough to keep, so we headed back to Ship's Cove for a picnic., thats Bob's boat tied to the wharf at Ship's Cove.
Back home we shucked all the scallops and had a big meal of wonderful sweet scallops.