After an overnight stop in Charles Sound we were underway early, bound for Doubtful Sound. The forecast had promised nothing — no wind, no swell — and for once it delivered exactly that. The Tasman was a mirror. The engine ticked over at cruise revs and the bow barely disturbed the surface as we worked our way south along the Fiordland coast.

Passing the entrance to Nancy Sound, the conditions were so perfect and the water so inviting that we made the call to stop. Not to anchor — just to drift off the entrance in the deep water and put the rods out. The coastline here is genuinely unforgiving: vertical walls of dark rock draped in moss and rata, no beaches, no margin for error. You are either in the fiord or you are on the rocks. But in a flat calm, with the engine off and the lines down, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

The Fishing

The bottom fishing off the Fiordland coast is extraordinary — the water is so clear you can watch your jig dropping away into the dark — and today it delivered. Drifting off the Nancy Sound entrance, we pulled up a good haul of trumpeter (Latris lineata) and blue cod (Parapercis colias), both in fine condition. The blue cod in particular were fat and feisty, the kind of fish that makes a simple pan-fry with butter and lemon feel like a Michelin-starred meal.

The Visitors

While we fished, we had company. A pair of albatrosses found us almost immediately — as they always seem to — circling the boat for the better part of an hour before settling on the water alongside us with the supreme indifference that only a bird with a three-metre wingspan can pull off.

Close inspection confirmed them as Buller's Albatross (Thalassarche bulleri) — identifiable by the bright white forehead and crown contrasting sharply with dark brown upperwings, the distinctive dark eye-stripe, and the yellow-ridged bill with its dark cutting edge. Buller's are one of New Zealand's endemic albatross species, breeding on the Solander Islands directly offshore from where we were drifting.

They are not impressed by us. They are, at best, mildly curious about whether we are going to drop any fish scraps. We did. They were grateful, in their own aloof way.

Onwards to Doubtful

An hour of drifting, a good haul of fish, and two albatrosses for company — then we pulled the rods, fired up the engine, and continued south. Doubtful Sound was waiting, and the flat calm would not last forever. The fish were cleaned and in the fridge before we reached the entrance, and the coastline slid past in silence all the way to Secretary Island.